Chapters The streets of Istormbul did not contain litter or refuse, but in this city, the streets were always empty air, regardless of the mood of the city. The wide main paths of open air separated carefully balanced city blocks, sculpted by, and imbued with, subtle magic of the winged ponies who inhabited the city. Nearly a thousand long bridges bound the clouds together, letting each block be independent yet united.
Along the eastern side of the city the view was of the overcast oceans. The western edge floated above grass plains, separated from the waters by a wide beach. It was one of the lower altitude cities that had been built, a tower of a hundred score ponies would just reach the city's underside. A pony looking up from the ground saw only the pale shadow below each thick city block, with gaps as narrow as cracks in an old coat of paint.
In this small city of barely a hundred cloudy blocks, several thousands of pegasi live. The youngest learn about their world, each other, themselves, and their unique loves. The adults spend their days taking that knowledge to improve the city in some small way. Finally, the elders watch the rest, helping teach even those who consider themselves done with learning. Many came to this city to work in the small industries that somepony had seen a need for. Many choose to leave, following dreams of whiter clouds, or loves which were born without wings.
One left before she was ready, and never returned.
==~~*~~==
In the center of the building, a trio of large hollow pillars of finely sculpted cloud somberly waited their time to sound. As smooth as marble, each was tuned into a wind instrument, each with a single note. When the clockwork surrounding the base ticked over, deep notes hummed through the halls and into each room of Istormbul's Second Eastern District Daycare and Kindergarten. Being the final time those notes would play for three days, it was unsurprising that the third note was accompanied by nearly a hundred cheering voices, each with a pair of wings flapping in unison as pent up excitement was released. Out of the wide classroom doorways pastel blurs raced, and the young flocks flooded the hallway. As tightly packed as they could, each tried to be the fastest, even those who galloped along with their wings not quite lifting them.
In one classroom, the teacher pegasus futilely tried to smooth out her mane which had blown about in the brief intense whirlwind. The last student in the room hadn't taken flight, but had merely stood as the air settled. Her smile of calm relief wasn't as eager as her classmates as she walked to the open doorway, small wings tucked up against her rusty coat.
"Don't pretend to forget it." The teacher said, not even bothering to look towards the filly who stopped at the doorway mid-step. Guiltily laughing, she turned in place, and walked to her cloak hook, the only one in the room which had a school-time occupant in the spring.
The student reluctantly pulled the cloak down to the ground, spread it out on the floor, and glared at it trying to set it alight with her hatred. After a step into each of the short sleeves, she crouched down and pushed the garment over her head, shaking around to spread the cloak down her back. A long strap dangled off one side, and with a struggle, she pulled the strap under her, and fed it through a buckle on the other side. After threaded through, she bit the end of the strap and pulled it taut, without making it too tight like any adult did when putting the cloak on her.
After a futile effort to make her unwanted garment actually comfortable, she shook her long purple mane away from her face, and grabbed her empty Wonderbolts lunch box. The small pegasus trotted out with a parting word mumbled out through her occupied mouth. After walking down the short hallway to the foyer open to the sky, she approached the center platform and sat, watching as small groups of the even younger foals departed, chaperoned by their caretakers. When she was sure that she was alone, she took a few moments to look down at the lunch box placed at the base of the machine that hummed the class changes, and spread her wings.
Her small wings buzzed, fluttered, flapped, and rumbled erratically as she jumped around in small circles, face grit into a determined scowl directed inwards. But as usual, she failed to find the set of movements that would give her just enough lift to rise to the air, or even lift her off the ground for a moment. When her small endurance wore out, her aching wings slowed to a stop, and she sat down, catching her breath after the pointless exercise. She yelled meaninglessly, and brought her feet down on the lunch box. Emblazoned upon it was the scuffed and scratched picture of a pegasus with a mane like fire in flight. The image stared up at her with a grin that now felt more like the hero was mocking her rather than being encouraging.
***
Outside the sky was full of travelling forms, some pulling carts, many wearing a pair of saddlebags as they travelled on hundreds of anonymous errands that help keep the city running smoothly. As she walked her familiar path home, the orange filly watched the loose crowd. Letting her imagination free, she imagined who each was, and when she saw a familiar distant acquaintance, the story of their cutie mark.
As she crossed the first bridge, a group of classmates who had not yet drifted far from the building spied her. Like many young ponies who were trying to prove how high they were in the pecking order, they eagerly descended to her to remind her that she was lower in the school hierarchy than they were.
Three pegasi landed around her, neatly cutting off each escape route of the cloud bound pony. Less neat were the landings of the two colts who surrounded her; One put forehooves down too early and nearly planted his face in the cloud, while the colt who had cut off the bridge retreat skidded jarringly when he landed. But when the cloaked pegasus tried to flee, she darted down the path blocked by the flier who had landed nearly perfectly, who easily blocked her way.
The pale blue face of the leader of the small gang grinned at her prey. "How do you do that I wonder," she asked, stepping forward each time the orange filly tried to get her personal space back. "You really must share your secret. Magic shoes? A potion?" She kept up the taunts as she kept boxing her victim in with the help of her two cronies.
Carrying the lunch box in her teeth, it was hard to make a coherent reply, but she tried her best. "I on't knoo what you nean," she mumbled around the container's handle. When one colt jabbed her side, her yelp let the box fall to the cloud they stood on. At the edge of the bridge, the clouds hardened by hours of pegasus sculpting merged with the softer barely tamed cloud, and where the mundane object landed, it started to sink into the surface. "Go fry your wings in the sun, Crystal, I'm not playing your stupid games again." She spat weakly, then looked for her lunch box. The colts had kicked it onto the bridge, apparently one of them thought it was worth taking rather than letting it fall through. "Fine, take the stupid box, just go away." She grumbled, resigned to giving it up, hoping it would avoid the fight.
"Why would I want that foalish thing? I want the secret on how an earth pony like you convinced the clouds you belong up here!" She pointed her leg at one of her retinue, and one side of the cloak was pulled upwards. "I don't think that's a wing at all, it barely even has feathers!" Crystal pushed forward, forcing the smaller filly between the two colts. Her back feet slipped on the edge of the cloud, and suddenly all that stopped her from falling to the sea below was forehooves digging desperately at the cloud, managing to find a weak purchase as rear legs frantically spun at the side of the city's foundation.
"Woah now, this isn't funny any more! Help her back up," one colt yelled before trying to get a hold of the edge of the scrambling filly's cloak. Reaching down, his first grasp only managed to catch strands of the purple mane in between his teeth, pulling them from her head as he yanked upwards. He looked down, meaning to get another look at where the cloak lay, but his eyes were drawn to hers, and for a moment their gazes met. His look was full of anger, it was not meant for the struggling orange filly, but at the other who had roped him into this. Hers showed pure desperation, pleading for mercy that he was ready and willing to give.
Crystal jabbed his side hard, forcing him to away before he could get a good grasp. She stepped to the edge of the cloud, looking down at the desperately pleading filly with contempt. "Oh, it looks absolutely hilarious to me!" She stepped down on one leg, digging her hoof in until the orange filly began to scream, her free leg desperately trying to push the attacker off rather than keep hold.
With the small gang's intents divided, both of her subordinates rebelled, physically pulling the blue filly back. With all three trying to yell over the other two, none of them realized that she had slipped off the edge until long afterwards. When a truce was finally reached, the three stood at the edge, staring down at the sea, trying to look for her. "Should we, you know, go down?"
The leader walked over to the box, and flipped it over to look at the scratched image pasted on the front. "Don't be stupid, they're already going to pick her up, they always blame the fallen. Let's go get some cloud candy, I'll pay.
***
The first time she had fallen, she had screamed in mindless terror, even after she had landed on the ground, only stopping when another pegasus hugged the small foal. The second time, the safety cloak opening jerked her out of her terror, and she almost enjoyed the ride down, until the cold water touched her. The third, she managed to steer the descent enough to land in the surf a stone's kick from the beach rather than the sea.
On the fourth and final time, she screamed not in terror, but impotent rage as the wind roared in her ears. Seconds after reaching terminal velocity, the safety cloak billowed out, seemingly disintegrating as puffs of clouds expanded and flew away from the garment one at a time while still connected by fine threads of tightly spun cloud-stuff. Each slowed her fall a bit more, leaving her in a much darker harness with one final use, to become a floatation device when the salty ocean rose up to meet her.
Small pegasus wings flapped slowly at first. She briefly forgot about her fight, and focused on putting the small amount of lift her wings generated into a fall that angled towards the shore. When she landed, while the water was just as cold as she feared, the shallow surf only reached partway up her legs, and she struggled to walk to the shore, each step through the water's resistance a little easier, until she finally reached the dry beach.
Collapsing onto the warm sand, she curled up her legs under her to warm them up, and shook as emotions tore her to pieces. To her young mind, every imperfection of her life amplified. The bullies never left her alone, while her friends often did. The school treated her like she was stupid, then her classmates saw her as the teacher's pet. She was constantly shuffled from the detached oversight of a group home, to the loneliness, or worse, of a foster home. As her mind flowed through all those pains and more, untapped strength pushed her to a stand, and she fought at the one thing that still tied her to her life.
The cloak was quite resistant to her attempts to tear any part of it, so she eventually focused on just getting it off. Once the strap was undone and she could pull the uncomfortable harness off, she took it in her teeth and spun in a tight circle, releasing to throw it as far as she could into the sea. Not very far at all. As it impacted the water, the final spell in the cloak discharged, and the ugly thing puffed up into a small cloud floating on the water.
Walking away from the shore, she stopped briefly to look at a small tide pool, full of slimy seaweed. She had been taught that she could eat it if she had to, but like most foals, wasn't eager to put that lesson to the test. The plains that started after the small rise at the edge of the sandy beach spread out as far as the small filly could see until the wind off the sea caught her loose purple mane and obscured her vision. Specks of color hinted at wildflowers as abundant as stars in the night sky. When she reached the first, she neatly bit off the small white flower, chewed curiously, and found the new flavor pleasant.
She turned to look back down at the beach, at her abandoned safety cloak, and was unable to see a single pegasus between the ocean and the clouds. "I guess they stop looking after you use three up..." she muttered before eating her second wildflower. "It would be so easy for them to just forget I was ever up there, they never even got my name right, not even the teachers. I don't need them, I have plenty of food down here, all they ever do is tell me to do stupid things. I don't need other ponies anymore," she ranted, taking out her anger of the world on the earth, each statement being delivered to the lonely land with a stomp of emphasis. "I can rely on myself, I don't need anything up there." She coughed at the incompletely chewed flower, and began to wander away from the sea, eagerly sampling the flowers as she went.
"None of them even remember my name. It's a stupid one anyway, nopony even pronounces it right. I don't even need one if I do everything by myself." She managed to smile at the idea, freeing herself from a life that while not perfect, was better than it could be.
===
The search for the pegasus foal lasted all afternoon. The search party had grown to more than a dozen pegasi to thoroughly search the sea for a small white cloud. The cloak was finally discovered blown ashore, empty of its passenger. Case files opened overnight, and the morning paper gave a small segment at the bottom of the front page, with officials begging for information of any kind to help investigate the disappearance of their young citizen.
Despite the busy time of the event, few witnesses came forward, just like nopony had descended to break up the fight. As usual, accounts were conflicted on the palette of the other foals involved, and what had actually happened.
Beyond the beach spread a large strip of land, mostly devoid of any large features. The plants and animals which thrived on the plains were all small or short, and many failed farms littered the land with the corpses of generations old barns and plowshares that were slowly rusting away. Everypony who had tried learned the same hard, simple fact again.
Water.
Water was in short supply, and probably always would be, as long as the city that ruled the weather for the area had any sway. They deprived the land too close to the shore of a large portion of the natural rainfall, not wanting to waste the resource that could be used to greater effect elsewhere. Once wells went dry, the meager offerings from the weather weren't enough to cure the drought for long.
This dry, but not desolate land spread inland a fair way. It would take two turns of the hourglass of trotting inland to bring an adult pony to the nearest established farm or town, while a slow walk of a filly would take two whole days, if she was going the right direction.
==~~*~~==
When the sun lowered past the far edge of the city that sprawled across the coast's sky to shine on the lower lands, the unnamed newcomer to the wildflower plains was still slowly walking inland. She was taking her time to learn the taste of each new flower, and enjoy the warm wind that Istormbul rarely contained. With so many flowers to choose from, there was no point on filling up on the substantials. Why waste time on stalks and leaves when another delicious flower was a hop away?
The vaguely salty wind whistled around her, the sound emphasizing how alone she really was. Small signs gave hints of other animals which had found a niche. Rabbits and small birds sometimes were seen in the distance, but they kept that distance, fearful of the pegasus who walked by. With a long mane, the deep purple locks billowing out in the wind looked like a tattered flag of a long lost realm buried in dry clay, and the wild things avoided the new or unusual.
Shadows stretched out ever so slowly, as if they feared they would snap, until they reached the edges of vision, and turned inside out, darkening the world. Reluctantly, the nameless filly stopped her travels, and unable to go on, stomped out a flat space of land to rest while waiting for the moon to light her way.
When the moon finally did rise, it was not the full moon of legends and songs, but the thinnest of crescents. With it much too dim to assist her sight, she lay on the grass, head turning back and forth as she got as comfortable as she could. As her eyes spent more time closed than open, she finally faded into sleep, wondering if the moon was smiling or frowning at her.
***
Dreams of a sea of ponies, all turned to bar her way. Dreams of demands she didn't understand. Dreams of being pushed out of a bed that had only just became comfortable. Her young sleeping mind obsessed over it all, the small pains being the largest she had known. She saw nopony she recognized, for in her waking life few had risen above the sea of the great other for long, quickly washed aside as other interests or responsibilities took them away.
As exhaustion waned, the cold slowly became more prevalent to the sleeping filly. Her body curled up to conserve heat, and then hours later began to shiver to make more. An afternoon of grazing only the tips of flowers didn't offer enough energy to go on like that for long, so even that did not keep her asleep until dawn.
Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with ice, except her tongue, it had become a slug instead. Thirst had not yet taken a worse toll from her, but it would soon. Hunger was no worse than any morning's, but it was also the easiest to deal with. In the darkness her steps were hesitant, not taking for granted the unseen ground. Similarly, each shadowed plant was carefully sniffed and tasted before passed or devoured.
The light in the eastern sky grew as the moon reached the opposite horizon and sank beneath the waves. Celestia's light slowly pushed back the darkness. Each color was given back to the world as the star was ever so slowly lifted into the sky. Early morning dew covered the plains, each droplet catching a speck of the sun's power, to shine like a gem as the light and the life competed for the short lived bounty of moisture.
The wandering filly never got what felt like a satisfying mouthful of water, but her grazing did manage to push back her thirst for the meantime. The sun warmed the land, helping with the chills of the night. Unfortunately, this also deprived her of more water, the morning fog rising up out of reach too soon for her thirst to be quenched completely.
The problem of water became more obvious as she walked inland. No streams could be heard when the wind calmed. She hadn't seen any pools of water, rising up from a spring or even a stagnant puddle. The low sun shone in her eyes, and rather than continue inland and be blinded, she veered to the left to follow the coastline north.
To her, the logic was impeccable. Rivers and streams flowed towards the ocean. Walking directly east would just search the same path that she already knew had no flowing water. To follow the coast, she could find standing or flowing water, and she wouldn't have to squint all morning too!
With the shine of the ocean on the western horizon as a reference point to keep her path straight, she set out at a determined trot. The day passed, and while the wild food was just as abundant as the day before, she ate sparingly, focusing on chewing up distance rather than plants. She tried to enjoy her journey across the overgrown land, but her nagging thirst let her know that the one thing that stood between her and a dream life alone on this beautiful plain, was a steady source of water.
***
The first sign that she wasn't the first pony to ever cross this land was a long ago abandoned barbwire fence, dividing two halves of otherwise identical shrub-land. The posts were sturdily anchored in the ground, but completely overgrown. Years worth of vines curled up the dead wood, which had been covered in tiny holes where insects had burrowed. The wires had stiffened and rusted over, and left only a two apple tall gap between each line, plenty of room for a smaller creature to fit, but a tight squeeze for the nameless filly, who didn't want her back and front stabbed by the tiny barbs.
The afternoon sun had baked the dead wood for only it knew how long, but the splits in the dried posts did not weaken it. A hesitant hit from her forehoof to see if she could knock it down was unfruitful, it was far too narrow a target to put her full force to use. She didn't relish the idea of getting a leg snagged by the rusty wire, and her fear held back her strength even more.
The fence reached out to the limits of her vision in both directions with no sight of a gate or break. Each post rose from the ground to much higher than her, and from her experience from her hundreds of aborted attempts at flight, she was sure even her strongest leap wouldn't clear the fence. That left only going under it.
She put off the struggle of crawling through the dirt as long as she could. She spent a good while standing in place, arching and curling her spine as little wings went through the trial of generating lift, but never quite reaching the sweet spot where a jump would become a short glide. Flowers big and small were devoured, even if they made her parched mouth feel even more thirsty. She jumped as high as she could, squinting into the distance for some kind of landmark to aim for. At the peak of her leap, on the far side of the fence, she could just make out a speck of brown that rose above the plain. After knowing where to look, she could just make out the distant building.
After settling on the decision to cross the fence, she began searching for the best place to scoot under. The undergrowth was too thick to dig a trench, but after carefully testing several posts, she found one where the lowest wire's staple was loose, allowing her to pull the wire free, allowing her to pull the wire up higher with two span's worth of slack.
Once she already had crawled halfway through, the barb painfully digging into her back taught her a lesson too late. The sharp point broke the skin on her back, the gap was still a tight squeeze, and once actually under the wire, nothing held the barbs away from her back. Backing away or trying to stand up while under the wire would just make it hurt worse. She grit her teeth in frustration, face screwed up from fighting the urge to wail. Ever so slowly, she pulled her the rest of the way along the ground, trying to flatten herself as best she could against the ground, but never getting away from the barbs. Moving sideways just let two of the points scrape her back, there wasn't enough distance between them.
Once she could stand again, she twisted up, trying to assess the damage she had caused. faint red lines showed through her dusty coat, only up near her shoulders were the scratches so bad already dried specks of blood showed. Unpleasant, but not too bad, she had suffered similar and worse from classmates, or her own carelessness.
After shaking aside her long purple mane, she licked the scratches she could reach, and then headed towards what she was now sure was some kind of a building. Hopefully it had water around and nopony to complain about her drinking until she felt sick.
***
The barn had been painted red, but so long ago that only small flecks of paint remained. Even when she got close, she still didn't smell signs of ponies, and the faint grooves in the ground which had once been trails had been reclaimed by the prevalent weeds that thrived on the dry land.
The barn door swung open with the protest of groaning rusted hinges when she pushed at the with all her strength. A hole in the damaged roof let a slanted beam of late afternoon light in, showing a floor littered with debris. Small animals had claimed corners and rafters with nests made from the scraps of straw and hay that remained after the place had been abandoned. After the pleasant fresh wind of the plains, the smells of the moldering wood and the enclosed space holding in the airs of the wild animals made her unwilling to search the building very thoroughly.
Besides the barn that had been visible from the fence, a few smaller structures came into view when she approached. Skipping out of the obviously empty barn, she turned towards the family size cabin, in a slightly less decrepit state. Its front door was closed tight, and a few sniffs at the handle suggested that nopony had opened it since it last rained, which she was suspecting was very long time ago. This door had an actual latch that was a struggle to open, taking several minutes of beating at the handle before the rust gave way.
Dust swirled in sunbeams as the door opened, air currents exploring the empty space in the sparse room. A single overturned wooden plate on the shorter foal-sized table, and a quick hop showed the second taller table was bare but for a layer of dust. A trio of cupboards on the floor by the window sat beside an unrecessed fireplace. Above long dead coals lay a blackened bar mounted into the stone, sticking out of the back of the fireplace. The free end was covered by a small crosspiece to allow easy yet secure placement of a pot.
She explored through each of the small rooms, finding bed-frames lacking mattresses, and cupboards and closets open and empty. Only after searching through a second time to be sure she hadn't missed a possible boon left behind by the previous occupants, did she find something worth taking. A pair of old saddlebags hid just outside a casual gaze, slung over a rafter in the bedroom.
Balanced precariously on one of the naked bed-frames, she reached for the bag, wings blowing up a cloud of dust to keep her from tipping off. She bit the corner and jerked at it, but the thick rough cloth caught on the bare wood of the overhanging beam, making the retrieval a long chore of shaking, pulling, letting up pressure, and trying to not fall off the narrow footholds she had and end up hanging by her teeth.
She was sure something was inside the bag now, something was bouncing around the inside of the bag. Her hopes ran wild with ideas, starting at the obvious desire of just a good drink of water, but quickly escalated into juice, jam, honey, and even coins, even though the contents made no noise when the bag shook. Finally the bags came free from the rafter beam, and she scrambled at the opening. After finding and undoing the buckle, she upturned the bag to roll out the container inside.
A tall glass bottle rolled out onto the dirt floor, and she made no move to stop its escape, simply staring at it in surprise. The bottle was large enough to fit half of her leg in, barring the opening which was so narrow a grape would have a tough time fitting though, sealed with a cork. With no label to explain what the contents in the bottle truly was, she worked the cork free with her teeth, and poured a small amount onto the small wooden plate on the foal's table, and licked it up.
Once she stopped coughing and spitting, the filly numbly pushed the cork back into the large bottle, set it upright, turned around, and pressed her face into the scratchy cloth, laughing and crying at the absurd horror of her find.
The one thing that hadn't been taken from the doomed farm was enough salt to keep a large family of ponies healthy for a year.
***
The saddlebags were usable, but looked really uncomfortable. Sized for an adult earth pony, they would drag on the ground when she wore them, and the rough fabric was sure to made her itch. Since she was alone, she couldn't even secure them properly, they slid off her back before she could figure out how to secure the chest strap. She had worked for them though, and she was determined to use them, even if her only real possession was the exact opposite of her strongest need.
She pulled the bag into the first room, and considered where to try and alter the bag to fit her. Funnily enough, the fireplace's bar that jut out was just the right height, so she took advantage of the silent offer. Rather than step into it, she slowly pulled out the ash pit, not wanting to turn the inside of the hut into a black cloud by stamping about in the powder. Reaching up to rub her foreleg against the bar, to remove some of the soot from the black iron, she found that the thick layer of soot hid its true nature. The metal under the soot was actually polished steel, which of course it had to be to support heavy pots from the single mounting in the back of the fireplace.
Shortening the bags to fit her small frame was at least doable, once she had swung them over the bar and examined how they were put together. it was simple enough to fold up each bag, and feed the strap that closed the top through the buckle on each bag's underside, originally meant for the chest strap. This kept both sides folded up, small enough for the filly to wear, and the extra distance that the chest strap had to cover meant that even it didn't drag on the ground.
After she had stepped under it and strapped it on, she tried to pull herself out from under the bar, only to realize how the cross-brace impeded her way. The step had caused a quiet scraping sound from behind her, and after the ordeal of getting the saddlebag free, dragging the bar out from the stone was easy. Nothing had actually secured the bar into the stone, but nopony had bothered to pull on what looked like a worthless piece of cast iron.
She crouched down, hopping her rear legs in the air to try and get the bar out from under the saddlebags, but it wouldn't easily slide free. She almost undid the saddlebags to get them off, but then considered that the light rod might be useful in some way, it wasn't worth the struggle of getting out of the poorly fit saddlebags to get rid of it now. As her final act in the small home, she went to the large glass container full of salt, and leaning nearly onto her side, eased it into one saddlebag.
When she exited, she left the door open so the many small places inside could be enjoyed by those who desired shelter.
***
Before she continued stubbornly onwards, she spied a final, smaller construction, and raced over in short lived joy. An open well sat in what could be the very center of the area encompassed by the long barbwire fence, maybe this was what it had been put up to protect. An open pit that was lined with a short round wall of stones stood beside a manual pump, the two ends of a lever molded in the shape of an adult sized work shoe, meant to be pumped in tandem by a pair of earth ponies.
The pump had seen better days, the lone filly was able to stand atop the higher handle, and even dared a careful hop, but her small weight wasn't enough to overpower the rust that had encased every joint of the device. She tried to peer into the well, imagining ways to get at the water below. Her thoughts wandered to a really long straw, a rope and bucket, to simply jumping in. All but the most drastic required stuff she didn't have, stuff she had never had, and she didn't really want to fall into a deep narrow pit filled with water.
With the sun low on the western horizon, she couldn't even tell how far down the water was, so she settled on the old method of dropping a rock in. It took a count of three to fall, and the small rock landed with a sharp crack upon another stone dropped down by another pony a long time ago. She weakly giggled at herself, looking at how she might have tried to take apart and fix the pump before actually checking if there was any water to acquire from this well.
***
Faint ruts where a wagon trail had once lain from the cabin to the barn was the clue on how to leave the farm easier than she had entered, but she solved it with brute force, walking along the west and north fence before she found the gate out, and looked back at the buildings, seeing the faint indentation in the ground that led right towards the buildings, easy to see with the sun on the verge of setting, casting long shadows across the ground.
As the sun started to go down, she turned back to the cabin, unwilling to give up a night of sleeping in the shelter of the dead home. As she trudged back in the setting light, she did her best to fill her stomach on the wildflowers that were all starting to taste the same.
Under the large table, with the rough saddlebags rubbing at her wings, she dreamt of itchy desert sand blowing in wild winds, and of an oasis which turned to salt when she drank from it. But her sleep was deeper than the previous night's, and was unbroken until the pre-dawn birdsong awoke her. In the darkness, painful thirst left the nameless pegasus with dry lips and the early signs of a throbbing headache. Nearly banging her head on the underside of the table, she slowly rose, stretching muscles stiffened from the cool night air that had blown in the open door.
The ground outside was wonderfully damp, and the strength of her thirst overpowered any caution she felt. She walked along the overgrown path to the farm's north gate, devouring leaves covered in the mist that had condensed upon the surface. Even the bitter leaves she sucked dry, ignoring the taste until she had leeched it dry and spat out the rather unpleasant plant. One look back at the failed farm was all she allowed herself, until she felt it was some kind of message telling her that setting out alone would just result in failure. It was a bit late to turn back now, her former home was little more than a grey smudge on the southern horizon.
Once outside the gate, the faint road faded away completely, with no single unambiguous trail to follow, she returned to her simple navigation method of keeping the rising sun on her right as she scrambled desperately across the morning plains for the short lived water. Once the mist rose away, she collapsed to catch her breath, between the short time of availability, and the sparse offering that would take far longer than she had to sate her thirst. She could do so much once she found real water. Build a shelter, bathe, collect the most delicious plants and eat like a young princess.
Of course, the easiest way to get water was in her birthright as a pegasus. Nopony thought to teach a pony who could collect and drink clouds, or just see rivers while in flight, how to collect fresh water in a dry environment. There simply was no reason to teach such impractical methods to one who would always have flight as an answer, for if flight wasn't an option, that pony would obviously have much more immediate problems than getting a drink.
Walking all day took a toll on her body, long before evening, her exertions had made her sweat out all the meager moisture she had collected that morning. She stopped walking for a moment, looking down at her legs, covered in dirt, plant matter, and soot. Tired, thirsty, and dirty. She could walk towards the shore and try and wash in the ocean, but an introspective part of her knew her thirst would tempt her into trying to drink the salt water, overriding the often repeated orders to not do so every time she had been brought to the beach.
As evening approached, hope of finding a source of water shrank. Her breathing was strained as she stubbornly used every hour of daylight to get that much farther away. She still didn't see the city as a safe place to grow up, high above the real dangers of the world. To her, the constant thirst was a large annoyance, not a serious threat.
Her legs refused to hold her for another step, even simply standing was becoming an effort that made her knees weak, so to mark the end of her day's trip, she pulled the saddlebags' securing strap loose. When she shook out of it, the metal bar also falling to the ground with a dull note as it hit the ground. Small orange wings unfolded, and slowly began the simplest movement that was promised to make her fly. Scoop down, slice up. Yet no matter how often she tried, actually keeping that pattern up and flapping several times a second always seemed out of reach.
Using the empty bags as a simple mattress was marginally preferable to the bare ground, but even in her exhausted state, sleep didn't come easily. Plans and ideas went round and round in her mind. Imagining shelters she could build, from tents to castles in the sky, trying to count the number of different plants she had encountered. Thoughts kept returning to how every problem centered around her inability to fly.
If she could fly, she could find water, on the ground or just drinking a cloud.
If she could fly, she wouldn't have fallen from the city in the first place.
If she could fly, nopony would have pushed her off.
If she could fly, they wouldn't even have been mean to her.
If she could fly, they would have been nice to her.
If she could fly, she might even have been part of a family rather than just a number in guardianship files.
If she could fly, she wouldn't even see the appeal of living alone.
***
In the dark of night, when the chill her nose with her mane, the lone filly rose to consciousness, dehydration squeezing her head like a vice. She moaned weakly, shifting on the itchy cloth. When she rolled over, one hoof reached over the edge of the bundled cloth, and she touched something cool and damp. After managing to pinch it, she tore it from the ground. she pushed the brief soothing chill to her head, before trying to rub some moisture into her parched lips.
Travelling across the wild land with a dim moon was slow and risky, but it gave her the advantage of a significantly larger window of opportunity to monotonously collect moist food. After giving up putting on the saddlebags in the darkness, she dragged the saddlebags along the ground with a foreleg, letting it slowly getting soaked in the night's condensation that lay across the plains.
When dawn came, this gave her her first real mouthful of water in days when she carefully squeezed the cloth into a large folded leaf. The faintly bitter taste was completely overpowered by the seasoning of still being desperately thirsty, but she still took the time to savor it, swishing it all around before gulping it down, and letting out a content sigh at the small moment of bliss which had cost an age of dragging and twisting the rough cloth.
As reinvigorated as she could be, she stretched out her wings and began to run through stretching routines. When she spread her small appendages out, she took time to look over each feather, as if one unseen problem was all that was keeping her grounded, and preening just the right spot would send her into an instant ascent. The sting she felt when she made a single flap of her wings down her back sent her into the air in a brief jolt of fright, but when she looked over her back, nothing caught her eye, just the faint red scratches that were still visible down her shoulders. Obviously, scabs had dried against her coat, and trying to fly would pinch her painfully as scabs pulled the tiny orange hairs.
Fortunately for her, they were in the one place that she couldn't idly scratch at, and even she knew better than to scratch a healing wound against the ground. Unfortunately, such actions wouldn't make the injury worse than it already was, even if the symptoms of her infection would not manifest for many days.
***
On a morning which left the anonymous filly in the dawn mist after a nearly sleepless night of painfully inefficient foraging of water, she decided to do something new. Between hours of licking up dew, and three times squeezing out her bag for an extra provision of water, a chore she could now do in the dark, ever-present thirst had been pushed down the list of her current desires. Her legs and sides were stained with green patches, and her mane felt matted and tangled from the many days of constant exertion. She also hoped a soak would help relieve how stiff her joints had been feeling lately, constant travel had to be why her body felt hot and aching after walking in the cool nighttime.
Stepping up to the small rise of land overlooking the narrow beach, she doffed her meager possessions, bundling up the bags and weighing them down with the light steel bar. Walking across the sand, she looked all about as she nerved herself up to step into the surf that quietly licked the sand.
Her surroundings were enough to make her feel like the only pony in the world. The sand was washed clean of pony footprints as far as she could see, and the apparent stretch to infinity of the flat sea held no ships. Even the sky was empty of the signs of civilization, except for a few thin streaks or specks of pegasi travelling across the sky.
Stepping out into the shallow surf, she walked across the submerged beach until the water was nearly tickling her high rear ankles, hyperventilating as the water gripped her. Uncomfortably past soothing coolness, the water chilled the surface of her fever, and began to numb her legs. Determined to get as much benefit from the dunking as she could before she fled to higher ground, she scrubbed at each of her legs in sequence, digging up the fine wet sand to scrub into her coat, the closest thing to soap she could find. Cleaning her sides was more difficult, and she settled for sitting in the water and awkwardly rubbing at the worst of the dirt with her even less dexterous rear hooves.
She had no way to untangle her mane, but it wasn't as dirty as the rest of her, and cleaning it wasn't worth dunking her head into the cold salty water. She opened her wings out to examine how the useless appendages had fared, and winced at how her muscles protested at the act. deciding to give them just a light wash, she curled up in the shallow surf to slowly flap her wings just under the surface.
When the next small push of the ocean on the shore rolled over her back, it felt like the water had sliced her spine open, and the shock crushed her as she struggled to get out of the water before the ocean could do it again. Once on the dry land, she shook off the cold water, and climbed off the beach, sitting down beside her bags rather than atop them. She didn't enjoy the idea of the absorbent cloth being covering in salt, even if that was half of what it had carried away from the farm. Trembling on the edge of the beach, her wings hung limply at her sides as she curled around as best she could to look at the wound on her back that had been completely ignorable up until now.
She had just assumed the deep scratch would just heal up, but her neglect and ignorance had let the wound heal over while infected, and she had managed to pull the scratch open again, letting the brine of the ocean get in to alert her to just how bad it was. With nopony else to help her, she was resigned to letting her body fight it off from the inside. She still thought all harm a pony could be infected with would heal in time.
***
As the infection deepened its hold, her already quiet civilized mind began to detach and escape from the fever, the stiffening in her joints, and the slow realization that the slow decent of health wasn't reaching a place it could start to rise from. Habits solidified into mechanical routine, the threat of hunger and thirst pushing on a body which hadn't given up the doomed fight. With no name to bind identity and mind, the anonymous filly faded to simple actions, resigned to a fate of walking along until the spark faded away like the coil of a windup toy running out of tension.
***
Sleep when noon comes, rest when it's warm. Wake to the moon high in the sky. Eat. Drink. Walk. Try to fly. Fail miserably. Keep walking. Sleep again.
***
Watch the moon slowly thicken. Learn which plants with the most water on or inside them, and tell them apart by moonlight.
***
Feel body weakening, needing to stop more often. Notice how wings spread of their own accord, unwilling to properly fold up against sides.
***
Slide through each day, numb to the growing pains in body, barely even aware of the reason why each day is spent walking north.
***
Drop to the ground as a leg painfully cramps, so strong that stretching it out cannot be done. Wait for the cramp to pass, keep on going until a different muscle has its turn.
***
Find something new in the unchanging plain. A dirt road, something still used by civilization, the packed hard dirt containing the barely remembered scent of other ponies. See nothing in either direction worth walking towards, keep heading north.
***
Slip on the small slope on the other side of the road. Roll down, dragged bag following to bounce the surprisingly resilient jar off skull. Clutch head. Whine as another painful cramp starts to form up burning back. Feel wings painfully stretch up, tips almost touching each other. Feel body convulse as more cramps form, stacking upon each other, pulling tight enough to tear muscle fibers. Hear teeth grind together from a jaw locked tight, keeping in a weak scream as the first true attack of The Rigors takes hold.
***
Hear the sound of heavy footsteps. See with blurred vision a pale figure, as tall as the sky. Make out the square jaw of a handsome stallion. Spot the modest horn atop his head. Meet his blood red eyes. Struggle to return his smile. Hear his wings flap. Think about tales of the silent prince. Accept that this is the end. Surrender the nameless shattered body. Hope next time the wings are bigger, or not there at all. Let the world fade to painless empty silence.
===
Having lived most of his long life on the road, Loom had seen enough on his travels to recognize The Rigors in full bloom, an uncommon event despite how widespread the disease vector was. Anypony with a lick of sense knew how to prevent it, and in case of accidents, there was plenty of time to find a healer before the infection's poison spread too far.
The shock of seeing the semi-conscious foal quickly faded away as he saw the uplifted, spasming wings. The possibility that she had fallen from the sky froze him in place, as the wisdom to not move a trauma victim failed to actually tell him what should be done.
After a moment where the pain wracked foal seemed to catch his eyes, and actually seemed to give a smile before another shock ran up her back. He was only able to act after her eyes closed and her expression went slack as her consciousness left. Opening the clasp of his travelling cloak which fluttered and flapped in the incessant wind, he pushed it upwards with his pale green magic, shaking it urgently far above him as he yelled for help.
The first to join him were the youngest members of his family, Watermint and her brother Spearmint. He wasn't eager for them to see the broken filly, so he stepped forward to block their view, a firm look on his face. "This is grown pony business," he started, every part of him communicating that it was not the time to be playing around and to follow his instructions. "I need you to tell your mother to come down here, and then wait in the wagon until one of us comes back."
With a resigned sigh, the more obedient Spearmint turned about, while his sister was more rebellious and observant, trying to sneak a peek at what he was trying to hide from her. Despite his good intentions, her foalish curiosity won a sight of the filly splayed out in the grass. Tears welled up in her young eyes as she jumped to the logical conclusion, and she tore off back the way she had come, wailing all the way.
When his wife did come to help, the foals were of course stuck to her, rather than actually staying at the wagon. Heather looked rather upset and confused as she approached, her daughter still wailing about a dead pony, and the young colt trailed behind, not wanting to be alone, morbid curiosity wanting to get his own look.
"I'm trying to sort yesterday's gather when Minty burst in, clinging against me like a strangling vine, yelling something about a dead body! What have you done this time?" The mature mare railed, clearly more put out by the interruption than the apparent trauma inflicted upon her daughter.
Loom rubbed his neck against his wife's in apology, before focusing on Sweetmint, touching their small unicorn horns together before draping a foreleg over her back. "Heather, please, I tried to not let her see. She's not dead, but she's in a bad state. A pegasus, looks like she's younger than ours." He hesitated before giving the last bit of the diagnosis. "And... I think she's got The Rigors. They're bad." He winced as two small faces looked at him, eager to learn even if he wasn't eager to teach.
"Hush you two." He mock growled when they asked the obvious question in the exact same tone, only slightly mollified by his grim tone. "It's complicated. All you need to know is it's not infectious, you're not in any danger. You two had immunizations a few years ago, you'll be fine until you're grown up. But you can't be in the way, your parents are going to do everything we can to get her better and back to her family." he said, trying to turn the Mints away from the pegasus.
Spearmint managed to escape to the edge of the road, and looked down the pony-high slope to the little pegasus, with the strap of a pair of saddlebags wrapped around one of the forelegs which stretched out at an unnatural angle. "That's... bad, right?" He whispered, backing up to hide behind his sister. "There's something you can make to fix her, right mom?"
Heather carefully walked down the slope, intent on getting a closer look. After managing to untangle the filly from the unusually damp and stained bags, she began to take charge. "Loom, we don't have anypony with the talent to stop this, you need to head to the city as soon as possible, and get somepony with a good healing spell. Mintmint, head back to the wagons, tell the others that we're going to be stopping early, and bring back the strecher and a blanket. As soon as she relaxes, I'll check her for injuries and judge if we can move her." She stared up at her family who stood frozen in place, as if they hadn't even heard her. "Today! Her fate is on your back, so move!" Her big beautiful mate gave a simple nod, and wrapping himself in his cloak again, the magnetic halves of the clasp clicking together. He ruffled the mane of his two treasures with a touch of his magic, the only way he manifested the family's common color of green, and set off without a moment to spare.
Loom headed down the road to the coastal city of Gallopoli, resisting the urge to do as the city suggested and head there as fast as possible. It wasn't worth getting there in half the time if he used ten times the energy and didn't have any breath left to explain what he needed. Locking in a pace, most of his mind turned away from the immediate goal, and curled up in a tight ball of worry around the small pegasus, trying to figure out how a pegasus filly, of all ponies, could be found alone at the side of the road.
Even pacing himself at a brisk trot, the unicorn simply didn't have the physical endurance of an earth pony. By the time he reached one of the city's hospitals, his undyed linen travelling cloak clung to the sweat drenched stallion. It was getting time to quietly remind Heather for yet another time that just because he was the largest pony in their group, didn't mean he could outrun any of them. His little wife was more than an apple shorter than average, but she could easily outrun him in both speed and endurance. Even his young son had the magic of the earth keeping him strong and moving long after a unicorn who had spent his entire adult life on the move ran out of steam.
It just hadn't been the time, he didn't like to go contrary to her around his foals, they always felt they had to take sides, even if they didn't grasp what the argument was about. He was willing to put off such reminders for later, when a foal's life wasn't resting on everypony's back.
A bored nurse stared up at him, pale magic wrapped about a pen which tapped the countertop. "Do you have an appointment?" she asked in a tone flat enough to make a silly metaphor about.
"No. I've got an emergency! I need a doctor," he said in a voice much louder and desperate sounding than he meant to give. "Please."
"Emergency room is that way." She pointed with the pen before returning it to tap it upon the counter again. "Have a nice day, we hope to not see you again soon." The joke had been squeezed of any humor long ago for her.
Once he actually managed to get through bureaucracy of explaining that no, he didn't need admitting, he was there to get help for somepony else, but no, he didn't have an address to send an ambulance, he was practically frantic. When they rebuked his offer to direct them there, saying that the ambulance was not a taxi service, he was stomping the tiles in restrained urges to trample through and drag a doctor all the way back with horn and teeth.
"Stop pushing me around and help me!" He yelled, tears of frustration making his red eyes shimmer in the sterile light. He knew it wasn't appropriate to be making an emotional appeal, but it was the only coin he had left. "She's so small, in so much pain..." he choked out, before resolving himself, and continued on a deceptively stronger note. "My caravan found a filly foal, and she's got The Rigors. So bad she passed out during the attack. I don't know how she caught it, or why she wasn't treated sooner, or why she was by the side of the road with nopony around to help her. What I do know is, if somepony doesn't come back and help her before she's crippled or worse, I'm going to do something stupid like try and drag a doctor who doesn't even know how to fix her back!"
Once the stunned silence of the disruption wore off, the scattered crowd returning to their own duties, a poke in the side startled him, and he turned to face the poker. "She's lucky then, to be found by such a vocal pony," a pale blue unicorn with her mane bundled up under a paper cap said. "And luckier to have him find somepony who did her thesis on treating an infection that is so rare nowadays. I'm Bubble!" She touched his hoof in greeting, but before he could give his own name, she was already walking, forcing the cloaked stallion to catch up. "I'll get what we need from stores, and then we head to the roof. I know one of the mediwings on duty, and they're never both out. One's out nearly all the time, but it takes something really serious for the reserve to go out at the same time, and even then there's a third and fourth on call somewhere in Gallopoli."
She located the storage closet, and started pulling out things at random, items floating inside what looked like soap bubbles, her magic much more controlled and precise than the typical wobbly aura that manifested for most unicorns. The items floated over her, bandages, scalpels, a thermometer, and several glass bottles with disturbingly long names on the label. As she picked up more and more items, clearly unprepared or inexperienced with fieldwork, a few of the bubbles began to pop as her concentration spread thin. "Doesn't the ambulance have all that?" he asked, pulling his cloak off and spreading it out to catch any of the jars that might fall. The question snapped her concentration away from the dozen separate containments she had been holding, and the entire collection of implements fell into the cloak.
She squeaked in alarm as she prepared to hear all the glass shattering around her, only to look at the cloak spread out taut inside a magic field stretched thin. "Some of it would be, good point. I guess I'm lucky too now, meeting a Wander who's also a unicorn, and just the right time to save me from my over eagerness." She said, pulling out the things that the first aid of the ambulance would have already packed. After finalizing her choices, she packed them into waterproofed saddlebags, and started off again at a brisk trot. Leaping up stairs, Loom barely managed to keep up.
"I... Hate... Stairs." Loom panted when he reached the final landing. The top floor's indoor area looked more like a garage, a large open area with a grid of skylights for illumination. Across the space, by what appeared to be an inner office, his new acquaintance was nuzzling at a pegasus colt. He walked over, and when the younger male noticed him, he blushed and stepped away from the affectionate filly. "Um, hello." Loom tried to fill the suddenly awkward silence. "Not that your fillyfriend gave a chance earlier, but I'm Loom Wander, and a young pegasus really needs this unicorn by her side yesterday, so can we skip the pleasantries and such until we're on our way?"
The obviously new couple managed to regain their professionalism, and quickly moved into action, Bubble strapping down her kit as her coltfriend pulled the bright red aerodynamically designed ambulance wagon out the garage door. Loom climbed in the back, then into the safety harness that she pointed to. "One of the Southeast roads, five wagons together." He instructed to give the pegasus a direction to start.
A small crystal speaker chimed to life, and a chipper colt's voice emerged. "Gotcha. We'll be there in no time, or my name is Featherbrain!"
Loom blinked at the small speaker. "I think the saying is, 'or my name isn't'." He looked up to see the filly choking back a smile.
"Um, his name is Cloudberry. I'm sure that was a joke." Bubble looked around the cramped cabin, mentally running inventory on all she'd need, doubt and worry starting to form on her face. "If... she really does have The Rigors, and it's as bad as you think they are, it's still going to be a long road to recovery. The infection itself can be cleaned out, but the real threat is that it generates a poison as a waste product, which builds up in the muscles and tendons. Either process by itself is invasive and stressful, and neither will undo damage that's already been done, " She worried through the gear, still unsure if she had everything she'd need.
The pegasus chimed in, his tone determinedly happy. "You'll do your best, if anypony can help her, it's you. I think I see your caravan now, did you put up a banner? A long yellow cloth?" He asked as he began to descend.
Loom hadn't heard his wife mention anything about a banner, but spreading out one of their trade cloths sounded like something she'd do to get attention from passing pegasi, even though the sky was empty of casual flocks. "I hope that's them, try not to land on it though!" He said with an awkward laugh. His contribution to the Wander herd was his skill at weaving with linen thread so thin only the most careful of unicorns could set up the loom, he didn't relish the idea of even the cheapest cloth being unwound in such a windy environment. "I guess we could keep it and paint a message on one side next time we need to hail down some help from the sky."
When they landed by the caravan, the line of wagons all unhitched by the side of the road, Loom climbed out of the safety harness, and opened the back of the mediwing's ambulance, grateful to be back on the ground. He stepped out, and galloped over to Heather as she emerged from her wagon. The large pony skidded as he pulled up in front of her, her grim expression making him feel dizzy with worry until she pushed up against him for a breath.
"She's still with us, we managed to move her to the cot between attacks. Nothing broken as far as I can tell, but another attack started a while ago, I was afraid to give her anything to help, all I could do was make sure the foals didn't see." She trembled against him, needing the emotional support as much as he did, and looked over to their twin foals who many wouldn't even see as siblings. They had managed to be distracted from one event with another, meeting new ponies was always enough to get their attention, especially a pegasus who had carried their father all the way from the vaguely close yet still distant city.
Bubble carried towards them a first aid kit in her teeth, while a select few items floated around her, carefully limited after realizing going back to the wagon was better than having to go all the way back to Gallopoli General for a replacement. After mumbling an incoherent question around the handle, Heather gave a small laugh, and pointed at the back door of their wagon. "I suppose talking with your mouth full isn't an art unicorns bother to master." She followed the unicorn doctor in, but couldn't comfortably find a place inside, especially when Loom tried to follow as well, and filled the entrance.
Bubble sat at the pegasus filly's head, and began a thorough diagnostic. Her eyes were closed, and the only sign the blue unicorn was doing anything was a faint rainbow shimmer around her horn, vanishing with a quiet popping sound before reappearing. Each tiny spell was a simple demand for a piece of information, shaped by her knowledge of both the pony's biology and her well known mindless enemy.
Through the silent questions, she learned that the filly had caught the infection about six days ago, that she was suffering from severe dehydration, exactly where each of the infected sites were, and the near lethal level of the toxin in her body. Considering the grimness of the situation, many of the diagnosing spells returned good news. No bones were broken. The infection wasn't deep, disinfecting probably wouldn't do too much damage to the bundle of nerves at the base of her small wings. She wouldn't be flying for a long time, but she'd keep the use of them, and with work, she'd regain the power of flight.
After she ushered out Heather and Loom, she began preparation to begin operating as soon as the cramping attack subsided. Moving her simply wasn't an option, she had to make do. Normally such an invasive procedure would have the network of overlapping spells handled by a group of unicorns, each maintaining a part of the whole, but she was on her own, and to maximize the possible future for the filly, she had to move the instant there was an opening, the poison had reached full saturation in her extremities, even a mild attack that effected her respiration could be lethal. There were risks involved if she didn't drop a breathing tube, but doing so would add new risks.
She began to tick off the spells she'd need as she brought another small selection of items to the improvised operation room. "An external barrier around us both, and another around the wound. A necrotic tissue isolator, and an isolator to keep any of the infection from slipping into the blood during extraction. A muscle relaxant so another attack won't start mid-procedure." She paused mid-step, blinked once, and then reached up to smack herself in the face. "Or to stop an attack in progress!" She yelled at her own oversight, running to the wagon, and staring in with magical intensity. In sequence, each of the cramps and spasms in the small filly weakened and faded away as she made absolutely sure each she forcibly relaxed wasn't one that kept air or blood moving.
With the filly looking a lot more peaceful, the caravan was much more willing to approach the small pegasus, and with the unicorn unable to leave her side, she was reduced to making demands rather than carrying everything herself. She did manage to think of one thing that the caravan could offer which she hadn't brought. After explaining how exhausting running half a dozen of even the simplest spells for a few hours would be, the air quickly filled with the smells of food, even if nopony else felt like eating. Several plates of fried vegetables filled her to the brim, and soon she was feeling ready to cast every spell in the book at once.
She started to build up the spells that made up a field operating room, each dedicated to keeping the area as clean as possible. For Bubble, this meant a series of shimmering spheres that slowly inflated, each directed with rules on what was and wasn't allowed to pass through the surface.
The actual operation was rather straightforward, she just needed to cut away the infected flesh. Once each site was clean, she followed with a carefully crafted healing spell to fill the area with healthy tissue and seal up. The harder part was dealing with the toxin that had slowly been poured into the filly's body. She was one of the few medical unicorns who had studied this infection's byproduct enough to have a fully formed mental image of its complex shape. So small that nopony could actually see it without crafting microscopic spells that took half a herd of unicorns, and even then the sheer density of magic distorted what was seen on that level.
Many knew the complex compound word derived from its components and how they linked together. Few truly grasped the behavior and name of the toxin. It was the difference between knowing about hydrogen monoxide, and swimming. The tiniest filter Bubble could make slowly formed, and was implanted into the filly's leg. It was nearly the size of a pea, and had a single job of trapping within it any of the toxin that still pumped through her bloodstream. More filters could have been set up, but they were difficult to maintain. Letting it slip would let the toxin back into her blood, and she had to keep cleaning the filter to prevent blockage, by extracting the collected poison out through the needle that had hydrated the filly.
Squeezing out enough of the poison from her muscles took hours, but Bubble was determined to make her useless specialty be put to use at least this once. Muscles healed easily enough, it was their nature to be strengthened by being slightly damaged and repaired. The tendons that bound muscle to bone were another matter entirely. Now that the filly was out of danger, she had a mind to be able to see how while most of the tendons in the filly's legs had stiffened and shrunk slightly, the ones nearest to the healed injury had been soaked in the poison. Bubble knew when she was beaten, she had spent hours pulling the filly away from the bony hooves, risking all that work on another operation that could be put off later was simply put, stupid.
When she emerged from the wagon, the sun shone next to its reflected twin in the ocean, slowly dropping to kiss and sink. She walked out to a small fire, surrounded by a dozen worried faces, one of them surprisingly was Cloudberry. Had he waited here all this time? She did her best to give a smile of good news, everypony breathed a sigh of relief, and the quiet tension of the group broke. Curling up by the fire under her mate's wing, she watched the sun set, talked about how to help the filly next, and listened to the grateful earth ponies who seemed to delight in talking both to and about the young couple.
===
The nameless filly rose to awareness surrounded by the scents of the plains, but strangely different, focused and filtered so only the best elements remained. She tried to move, but her body felt strangely detached. Pain was there, but didn't seem so important, and her body felt the same way about her feeble attempts to move, concentrated effort let her open an eye, and move a leg that was politely informing her that it was being sat on. The small room she was in seemed to be a box made from the wildflowers she had spent a whole week getting to know, love, and become mostly indifferent to.
In her field of vision sat a mare, intent on tying a ribbon around a bundle of wildflowers. When she looked up from her work, meeting the foal's violet eye made her gasp. After a breath, she pushed aside a grayish purple mane from her eye with her pale green foreleg, and settled down in front of the small pegasus. "I'm glad to see you're awake. You gave us quite the scare. You can call me Heather, what's your name?" She picked up the bundle, and finding the appropriate space, hung the end of the bundle's ribbon over a small peg containing more of the same flower.
The nameless opened her mouth to respond, but could only manage a tiny confused squeak. After a second squeak, she gave up trying to talk, letting her mouth close into a small frown.
"Don't worry, everything is under control, that'll wear off in no time. We even stopped moving so you can recover. You'll be back with your family in no time." She gently stroked the foal's mane, surprised at how her attempt to give the filly comforting words had caused the weak filly to tremble, again desperately trying to move. "You're safe, we'll take care of you. Just rest now, you've been through so much, the worst is over."
She picked from the wall a bundle of small bright purple flowers, and placed it near her nose, letting her inhale the sweet scent. "If you get hungry, here's a fresh bundle of lavender you can nibble, it's sweet and relaxing." she said, carefully watching the foal's muted body language. She smiled in relief when her small offer helped to relieve some of the filly's weak trembles.
A slow movement forward, and the lonely foal caught a single blossom in her mouth, bit it free, and began to slowly chew. A painfully heavy foreleg reached out to touch the pale green mare's leg, and she squeezed her eyes shut, failing to hold back tears as she gave a pleading squeak.
More than understanding, the green mare moved to the orange filly's side, and sat down close, offering soft reassuring pressure as she curled maternally around the small figure. "You smell like one of my wildflowers, I suppose we can just call you something from my cart until you can tell us what your name is. Lavender seems appropriate, considering that beautiful mane of yours," she suggested, lightly stroking the filly's tangled mane.
With a weak nod, she reached for another blossom of her new namesake.
Wagons of the Wander Tribe were built to be as light as possible, while still being able to carry the upper limit of a single earth pony's pulling power. With a base resembling a large cart with a false floor, and a cover made from waterproofed cloth which was strapped over a skeleton of sapling trunks, they multi-tasked as many things, a storage space, a small workshop, a place to sleep, and in an emergency, an operating room. With the covers and frame removable, they also served as a way to store unwieldy tent poles, unused poles becoming redundant parts of the wagon's rib cage.
Trade caravans had the advantage of being able to specialize the wagons further, allowing some of the wagons to be primary storage for some trade goods or travelling supplies. If they transported items that water would damage, that wagon could be excepted from the need to carry its share of the water, and remove the risk a single wagon would have to carry. By giving young ponies a place to sleep that was mobile, the older ponies were able to travel for longer periods without having to worry about leaving somepony behind.
The wagon became an extension of all the ponies around it, making it far more valuable than any trade good it could ever carry.
==~~*~~==
When she woke up, she was alone again, the green mare hadn't stayed around after all. It almost felt like a dream, the way she had been almost completely unable to move. Her body still protested when she moved; standing up on the small cot which she found herself on was a struggle. When she saw the small dish and mug at the edge, she was more than happy to delay her escape from her confines.
The small meal consisted of a few small boiled and spiced potatoes, as well as a pickled carrot and cucumber on the side. Simple fare, but after a long time without a single vegetable, the meal was a wonderful change from her days and nights of eating low calorie plants that needed to be chewed for ages. The potatoes melted in her mouth, and the way the vinegar soaked into the carrot and cucumber bit at her tongue while they crunched and snapped made her savor each piece, her world briefly fading to the first real food she had eaten since she landed. The mug was drained in only a few gulps, but it was so much cleaner than what she had barely gotten by on for weeks, she slightly regretted drinking the whole thing in one breath.
She sat down on her haunches, forehooves rubbing at rear legs. All her muscles ached, and most of her joints felt weird as she moved, things inside resisted when she moved around. She couldn't quite straighten out her limbs, and when they were curled up, parts of the leg which hadn't complained before began to ache. Her few possessions were missing, the small floorspace was bare apart from the mattress, and the long poles that arched overhead contained a few hundred hooks, nearly all of them containing a bundle of a picked plant, but none of the spaces contained the dirty stained saddlebags.
Indecision on what to do next left her paralyzed, especially after she thought back through her patchwork of recent memories with a clear head. There had been so much pain she had been wishing for death. He had come for her, glowing red eyes in a stallion as big as the sky. Yet, here she was, mostly intact. She didn't feel dead. She was still a thinking, feeling filly, not a zombie pony. She still saw her own palette, if faded from dirt and grass, so she probably hadn't dropped back into a new body, if such a thing was even possible. Somehow, she had cheated death. A little foal had somehow scared off a nameless horror. The idea was so ridiculous, she began to laugh.
Her weak giggles broke off into a scream when the white stallion stepped through the door, horn glowing green. Scrabbling off the cot, she stumbled away from the doorway which he filled, scowling at her impunity to have thought she, a tiny filly, could cheat him. Her hooves scratched at the back wall made of a thick cloth, trying to find, or make a doorway out.
"Woah there, calm down!" He stepped all the way up into the room, dropping the bowl of warm soup he had been carrying over to have as lunch while he took a turn watching over the recovering pegasus. The filly was in a mindless panic now, ineffectively digging at the back wall with her hooves as she looked around wildly for an avenue of escape. Not one for confrontation, the large stallion decided that retreating to let her calm down was the best option, so he carefully backed out of the small room, and once he was clear of the doorway, a frantic orange and purple blur made a break for it.
She didn't quite have her legs figured out, unable to stretch them out for a proper, fully supported landing. Rather than hitting the ground running, she hit the ground like a sandbag. Legs collapsed up as she landed heavily on still bent joints, unable to properly support the touchdown. The breath was knocked out of her lungs, and the burst of energy from her fear ran out as she wheezed on the ground. Looking around to meet her doom head on, she saw nothing but a small covered wagon that she had bolted out of, and the empty road.
"Where'd he go?" She asked the empty road, her voice a broken note. The first real words she had bothered and managed to say since she had set off away from Istormbul. "Talking to yourself, seeing imaginary ponies, you're going crazy Lavender." She muttered as she rose off the ground. After she actually heard what she had called herself, the fuzzy memory rose closer into focus. Having seen the wagon's inside while much more lucidity, it was clear that the mare who had held her was more than just a dream. Unless her mind was really starting to drop her into delusions mixed between her fears and desires, which was starting to feel like the case.
As she walked back up to the wagon, and around it to see a whole line of similarly constructed wagons, each made from faded cloth tacked down to a wooden frame, Lavender heard the distant rhythm of a quick trot. Before she could move to hide, a small green mare appeared from between two of the far wagons, saw the pegasus, and ran the remaining distance.
Heather was on the small side for an adult mare, so while she could still tower over the foal, she was also able to drop to the same level without the position looking awkward. "What's wrong? I heard somepony screaming like she was on fire!" She looked over the foal with experienced diagnostic eyes; the pegasus was clearly struggling to stand, but didn't seem to be in any serious pain. She was practically gasping for breath, but it was slowing as she calmed down.
After the foal had enough air to recover, she managed to explain in a whisper, not really trusting her voice to hold on anything louder. "I thought I saw... something." She finished lamely, she really didn't feel like saying she was hallucinating a ponified embodiment of death. "Where am I?" she asked, and realizing questions would be the best way to change the subject, piled on as many as she could. "Who are you? What's all the wagons for? Where are you going? Do you have any more water? Why am I--" her questions were cut off by Heather as she touched at the foal's neck, a simple gesture of reassurance.
"There is plenty of time for all those questions, you've been through a very close call, and I and others had to take rather drastic measures to save you," she admonished. "We've tried to locate your family so they could be here when you woke up, but none of the farms nearby recognised your description, and nopony in Gallopoli has reported you missing." She sighed, looking down at the small foal who had dropped into her life.
She had appeared with a tangled mane and tail, and a salt encrusted, grass stained coat, and the few bizarre items that had been found by her. Heather wasn't sure exactly what to think about what had led her to be dying in a ditch, but the outlines of the shape of the problem hinted about something grim, and forcing the foal to fill in the details might not be the best idea at the moment; so she asked a simple question that could help them both, and hopefully not harm the shell shocked pegasus. "Is there anypony you want us to contact? We know a pegasus, he was too busy with his own job to search with us for your home, but he'd be able to get a message to a cloud town, if that's where your family lives."
The pegasus turned briefly to look at the southern sky, as cloudless as ever from diligent weather wardens taking the rain inland, and the clouds of her former home far over the horizon. After a silent beat, she answered. "No. Just me. Sorry for wasting your time."
Heather showed a small frown of pity as she followed the foal's gaze, smoothing back over as the orange foal turned back to their quiet conversation. "That's all right. There should still be some soup left from this morning if my ever hungry twins were stopped from finishing the pot." She took a step back and beckoned.
The two ponies slowly walked around the wagons to reveal a small group of ponies sitting around a campfire, with a frame holding a pot high above the fire to keep the contents warm. Each of the ponies wore a bright cloak, the same pale yellow with vague patches upon the cloth. Once she noticed the pattern, she paid attention to the cloak over the back of small green mare, and saw how each patch sewed onto the raw cloth was a simple embroidered image.
Varying in size from as small as a foal's hoofprint to a few as big as an adult's cutie mark, they seemed carefully arranged. A matching pair on the cloak's flanks showed a bundle of flowers, presumably they were heather. Behind them at the rear edge of the cloak, a pair of other symbols intertwined, a small tree grew from the flat iron of an anvil. Along each edge up her sides, smaller patches contained far simpler embroidered images, many difficult at first to make out what they were supposed to be. Up at the collar, somewhat obscured by her fading pink mane, a pair of empty patches could be seen, one plain grey, the other a greenish blue.
Before she could ask about the patches, one of the by the campfire saw them, and cheered a welcome. Once they all saw her up and walking, they wasted no time ushering her over to sit upwind from the fire, just close enough to feel the suggestion of warmth. The surrounding coals showed it had shrunk from a big cooking fire, to a single log covered in discarded plant material. Some of the ponies tossed in the bits as they sorted plants collected by the others walking around the nearby land.
She looked at each of the kind faces around the campfire, and for a moment, was able to show a pure smile, happy to find a place that wanted her. Until she saw the red eyes of her now habitual phantom terror, startling her out of any feeling of peace she had, and she scrabbled backward across the ground. When she backed into another pony, the spell was broken as she looked for Heather for defence rather than blindly flee. After a moment, the mare was located, nuzzling up against the apparition, even though he was an apple taller than any of the other ponies around, and towered over her.
Heather turned at the protest to see the small pegasus untangling herself from a scattered pile of gatherings, her wings desperately fluttering in the small arc of movement available to them. "Calm down silly filly, you're going to hurt yourself if you keep up like that." She teased and scolded with a light tone to show there was no hard feelings about the small mess the burst of panic had caused.
The pale stallion sunk down by the fire, just out of the stream of smoke being spun out by the wind. "Every time she looks at me she's scared sideways!" He exclaimed like the 'she' wasn't even there. "That's what all the fuss was about, she was awake when I checked on her, and she just started screaming. I came back to the fire to get you to figure it out, seems like we were two ships in the night missing each other like that." He sighed, and sulkily ladled out himself another serving of the soup pot's contents.
Heather blinked, wondering if it was really that simple. She looked down at the surprised filly, who's emotions hadn't quite returned to level, but had been twisted away from mindless terror. "Did he do something to scare you?" she asked, trying to hold back a laugh. "I'll have you know, he's the biggest softie in Equestria. He's harmless!" Perhaps she was going a bit far, as seen by his little sulk deepening briefly.
When she had calmed down enough to help regroup the pile of assorted flowers and herbs, the lavender maned pegasus managed to give a slightly confused explanation on how the last thing she had seen when passing out from the pain had reminded her of some stories of a hidden alicorn who came to take the dead away, and when he had shown up after she had woken up completely, it terrified her, still linking him to the embodiment of mortality.
They all had a good laugh over that, to the point where he even briefly pulled off his cloak to confirm he most definitely didn't have a secret pair of wings. His cutie mark was seen to be a simple loom shuttle with a free thread wandering from the spool, and he graciously introduced himself as Loom Wander. After he replace the garment, he offered a bowl of the soup up in a bowl wrapped a bubble of his simple magic. She was more than happy to accept it, even if she had just eaten.
As she drank the liquid, more interested in the hydration than the bits that floated around in it, the familiar couple related a simplified account of how they had found her. After it was made apparent that the pegasus had no knowledge of The Rigors, they also taught her about the affliction, and just how bad it could have been. They were more than willing to scare her to get into her head that she was not immune to it now. An untreated injury in the outdoors could start the cycle all over again, and it would probably happen faster if it was left untreated a second time. When they had exhausted that topic, the dead air was left open, only the wind whispering around, and the mismatched couple patiently watched the pegasus, as if waiting for an explanation.
Lavender drank the rest of the liquid, leaving at the bottom the peas, bits of tomato, and other less identifiable vegetables. She sighed, looking up to the pair who had literally saved her life, but didn't demand anything in return, except perhaps an explanation. Even that request was only suggested at, as if they wanted to know, but weren't willing to force it from an unwilling foal. They were willing to listen to her story on her terms, rather than interrogate her for the details they thought more important.
"Um, thanks for, well, everything." She started poorly, but Loom simply nodded and smiled, silently accepting the nervous gratitude. "Something like ten days ago, I'm not sure exactly, bad, stupid stuff happened. Nothing as bad as The Rigors, but she, um, it, pushed me over the edge. I just wanted to be alone, and this place let me." she gestured around at the plains, now dotted with a few small groups of ponies in the distance, wandering and talking as they gathered the wild plants. "I got scratched when getting under a wire fence, I was really thirsty, and I thought that maybe the place had water, but the farm had nopony. They were all gone. There was a well, but it was empty. All I could find was a useless jar of salt and a loose bar from the fireplace. I thought I could use it to make a tent once I found water." She scuffed at the dirt, not needing to say such a plan had failed completely. "By the time I realized that something was really wrong, nopony was around, and these useless things couldn't get me anywhere else." She grumbled the last words, looking over her shoulder at the small wings on her back, still stuck up at the funny angle.
When it became apparent that she didn't have anything else she wanted to say, her drained soup bowl floated up from in front of her. Another few ladles of the simple meal were deposited, and it returned to the thirsty pegasus, who eagerly began to drink. Loom smiled broadly, glad to see his distraction gambit had worked, he didn't like seeing her angsting over wings that didn't work. "I'm sure you've got plenty of questions, and we're always willing to share stories, but the one that is really important, need to be told the right way, when the day's nearly over. In the meantime, we're using the rest of this day gathering, we won't be setting out towards Gallopoli until the morning. I'm sure my little ponies will be heading back here soon for seconds too, they'll be glad to see you're up."
With another mention of other foals in their currently scattered group, she nervously looked at the distant ponies, trying to identify the ones they were hinting about, but none of the closer ponies were noticeably young. At least adults were usually benign in her experience, it was the ponies closer to her age who were willing to actually be outright mean back in Istormbul, so she was more than hesitant about meeting a pair of them.
Once it seemed the aforementioned ponies wouldn't be joining them soon, she tried to fill the silence with a benign question. "Um, why do you all wear those cloaks? I hated wearing--" she cut off in embarrassment, not wanting to talk about the stigmatized garment she had been forced to wear atop the clouds.
Heather gave a quirky smile, reaching up to rest a hoof on the largest cloak of the group, worn by her mate. "That, my dear, is part of the story. But it is a part that many ponies ask about, so the short version is, we're a part of the Wander Tribe, and these cloaks are what we use to signify that fact. We use them to record all the connections we build with other Wanderers, to show the Earth, and others, that we tie ourselves to those ponies, rather than places. Each of these small patches represent another Wanderer who we helped in some way, or built a connection on one of our travels, while the larger ones represent closer family." She took a sip from Loom's mostly untouched soup bowl rather than bother with the ritual of filling her own bowl. "It's more complicated than that, like usually, a cloak was made by the wearer, and most of the patches were made by the pony who displays that symbol, but that's the outline."
Heather was cut off by a high cheer from a pair of foals, who each wore a small pair of saddlebags, which were actually sewn small enough to wear comfortably. The taller of the pair skittered a bit on the slightly stilted legs of a filly during a growth spurt as she came to a halt. "You were right mother, they're all over the place!" the young filly exclaimed, her small teal horn lighting up to lift off the saddlebags from both her and the shorter colt beside her to drop them in front of her parents. One of the bags was opened to reveal a long stemmed flower which had been torn from the ground. The stem itself was so tall that if it hadn't been broken, would have easily stood as tall as the pegasus when she was upright. Currently, she had sunk down away from the fire, trying to avoid drawing attention to herself, but also blatantly eavesdropping the public conversation with her ears turned toward the mare and her growing daughter. "We got like, a hundred of them, most of them intact," she said with pride. "Should we go look for more?"
Heather sighed, and tore the thick white root from the body of the plant, and then slowly fed the long stem to the fire. "There's no fibers we can make into thread, and the actual flower isn't worth trying to choke down. When you harvest something that you don't need all of, you don't need to carry back all of the plant if you can strip it while still in the field."
"I know I know, you didn't say to get just the roots though." the turquoise unicorn muttered as she began processing the pair's collection, burning the stems and flowers and inspecting each root for signs of infestation, kicking out into the field any that had been burrowed into.
The shorter grey colt watched with a small smirk, as if he had told her that they only needed the roots a dozen times. After his sister had moved a bit away from him, he recited in a small voice, barely above a whisper.
"You can eat young roots of maiden's lace,
That short couplet had a rather drastic reaction on the rest of his family. His unicorn sister whirled at him, an angry blush burning all the way up to her ears. A deep laugh erupted from Loom, and was soon joined by the counter-tone of a higher laughing note of his wife. "Trying out for poetry? Or was that a shot at "making the fillies blush"? It's a fine line between love and hate if you recite about such matters." He rose to stand, and gave a pat to the short colt's mint green mane. "I'm going to go bring in what's been gathered so far, you two should introduce yourself to our quiet guest."
The twins looked around the campfire, and both instantly saw the orange foal now that they weren't focused exclusively on their own task. The twins dashed around opposite sides of the campfire, crowding into the new pony's comfort zone. The unicorn's squees of delight at she sat down made sure she got the attention first, and she grinned when she had it. "I'm so glad you're awake everypony was so quiet for days they were afraid you'd never wake up but you got better and everything's all right You're going to love the wild carrots we found nearly a hundred so far and there's so many more You should have seen father racing off to the city to find a doctor and he came back with a doctor in a flying cart Being pulled by a pegasus He's in love with the doctor He was a pegasus like you Your wings are so cute I wanted to ask to touch the other pony's wings but I was afraid the doctor would get jealous if he said..." Her words broke off as her mind outpaced her breath, and part of her realized just how crazy she sounded.
The much less talkative colt nudged the sitting filly's foreleg, and once he established eye contact, he introduced himself. "I'm Spearmint, and that's Watermint. Sorry about her." He sat down and looked at the fire which crackled weakly as it ate the refuse from the roots they had collected. After it seemed like she wasn't going to offer her own, he asked the question. "So, what's your name? Two days of calling you the pegasus is kind of rude, even if we couldn't ask."
Feeling quite torn between the two, she stretched out to just touch the warm boundary stones that defined the open fireplace, and tried again to properly straighten her forelegs out. Finally, she responded to Spearmint's question. "Lavender's a good name, right? It seems like an earth pony name though, since it's a flower." She wasn't completely sure about the name Heather had offered, but it was better than just keeping silent, or saying she didn't have a name.
"I think it's a great name, you've got a great mane to match the name. Mane name mane name may-nay-may-nay-mane!" Watermint laughed as she used her faint blue magic to tug free locks of Lavender hair from the tangle on her head. "Well, your name is good, your mane needs a bit of work. I've got a brush, that tail needs a good scrub. It's so dirty, we would have cleaned you sooner but water is hard to get on this road so we had to save it. Once we get to Gallopoli there's huge baths that everypony can use. They even have ponies who can give great massages, make your hooves feel brand new, and there's even some who do things for pegasi wings!" She paused for a moment, feeling rather like a salespony who hadn't completely studied the product. "Well, I'm not sure what exactly they do for them, but they'll make you fly better than ever, I know it!"
Lavender shook her wings, gently twisting them around, they reached the limit before they were even leveled out. "Fly better than ever. Yay." She deadpanned, but the hyperactive filly was already trotting away towards one of the wagons, presumably to get a brush. Brush plus tangled mane equals pain, every foal knew that simple equation. She turned to the twin who hadn't run off, forehooves pressing on his folded front legs as she pleaded with who she was starting to consider the normal one. "Stop her! I'll do anything!" She whined desperately.
"There are things I've learned growing up with her. The biggest thing is, if she's spending energy doing something that isn't harming me, I can't get in the way. Can you imagine how much tickling a unicorn can do? I don't have to." Spearmint shuddered, the torment of often being at the mercy of a unicorn sibling, with no overt magic of his own to defend himself, was a big part of the reason he had become the quieter, less brash twin, even with the controlling influences of their parents nearly always around. "Remind her to grab the base of your mane, that way the brush will break knot or the hair, rather than tearing off your scalp." He suggested as Watermint trotted back into sight, a brush and comb floating along beside her. Spearmint wasn't willing to take on the burden of his sister, with the chance of a small reprieve from being the pony in her focus, but he was willing and able to help turn a painful ordeal into a merely embarrassing one.
***
As the news of Lavender's awakening spread through the scattered caravan, the general mood lifted away from the morose nervousness that most of the ponies had been wrapped in. On a day that would have been perfect for finishing the last leg of the trip to the city, they had been gathering from the same area for two days in a period where few plants were worth harvesting from the ground, few flora matured this early in the season, and they were the ones which could sprout any time during the spring and summer.
With the reason for the halt gone, the gathering changed from an ineffective distraction to a welcome day of relaxation, with the ponies more willing to group up and bask in the warm sunlight and gossip or plan. The gathering ponies began to slowly build a harmony of song, with one or two voices at the focus which all the other wordless notes followed, the melody slowly shifting themes as voices joined and left the chorus.
As the sun dropped towards the horizon, the group began to converge towards the fire as its flames grew from the meal the two unicorns were beginning to feed it a dinner of firewood. Meanwhile, two young stallions she hadn't been introduced to yet cleaned the inside of the large meal pot with long brushes, carefully rinsed it, and began to prepare the final meal of the day, even though Lavender hardly felt hungry. Cleaned, diced white wild carrots went into the pot, along with a paper tube as big as Lavender's leg, which opened to clatter thousands of long thin noodles into the steel pot.
After a splash of water was poured in, Loom helped them mount the large pot above the fire, and more water was added until the small water barrel was nearly empty, and the pasta was left to rise to a boil. Stirred occasionally, the noodles and carrots were tended to while the caravan ponies drifted back to the fire, each wanting to get a bit of time with the new found foal, to share a simple story as introduction, or ask a bit about the pegasus. They were each gentle in their treatment, but even the kindest roads can wear down hooves to make walking painful.
Many of the small stories were interesting in some fashion. A passing pegasus had helped a caravan stuck in the mud each year. The third time she pulled them out of the mud, she decided to wear the cloak and go where her abilities were cherished. Since she was mother of the storyteller, many of the caravan had interacted with pegasi, and several did wear the cloak, even if they had to make a place for their wings to fit.
Others were less than boring, some talked to the foal about economic or environmental concepts she didn't even know existed. Eventually the foal or the socially blind pony gave up, letting meaningless words flow over her, or the other would make some excuse and leave after she asked for him to explain yet another strand of the conceptual web that didn't catch anything she was interested in.
A few, with awareness enough to stick to topics the foal would enjoy, but without anything more special to offer, returned to the default story to tell a foal who hadn't found her purpose. A young mare named Clover was sure she knew what her symbol would be, so she stitched a four leaf clover patch. A few days later, when looking for real four leaf clovers, her cutie mark appeared, missing the fourth leaf. She took it as a sign she had to make her own luck, and kept making her patches with four leaves, to share the luck with everypony.
When the meal had been cooked, the water was strained away, and twenty-three bowls were brought out, filled with the fresh hair-like pasta, and arranged in a large circle about the blazing fire. One pony placed atop each pile of noodle a pair of small tomatoes, already sliced in half, while Watermint share out a sprinkle of herbs and spices. Once all the preparations were complete, Heather stood, which seemed to be a signal, for all the others quieted down, giving her a silent air.
"We are all Wanderers, journeyponies who live for the road. Most of us will never be content to settle in one place, unless something changes who we are. But we are not lost, we are not cast adrift alone in the world, our homes travel as readily as we do, and we preserve every connection we make, until the next time ties can be strengthened again. Two days ago, we found somepony who was lost, somepony who was alone. Her vessel was blind and sinking. Due to my husband and children, help was found, and even though she is still recovering, we all helped her get there simply by keeping still these days." As she talked, she slowly walked around the campfire, briefly dipping into each of her travelling companion's shadows, giving them each a brief touch of acknowledgment.
When she stood upon the small shadow of Lavender, she stopped, and smiled down at the foal, no longer talking to the group as a whole. "Lavender, normally when new ponies walk a road with us, we share our first story with them after a day of travel. You've already been with us for two, but we have been with you for less than a day, or the other way around, depending on how you look at it. But you were on your own road before then, living off the bounty of the Earth, so I believe you have no need to wait another day. Will you share in this meal, and listen to the story that connects us all?"
Lavender gulped, looking away from Heather briefly to look at the circle of ponies she was part of. They each had intent expressions, as if the simple offer was far more important to them than it seemed. "Yes?" The irrational nervousness made her word a squeak. The tension mostly lifted when the small mare touched at her shoulder, and gestured to the food. Scooting forward, the foal pulled at the bowl closest to her, and tasted the mildly spiced noodles. "Um, thanks?" she asked, feeling like she was suddenly part of a rather important play, but hadn't been told her lines.
Heather nodded in appreciation, and continued to circumnavigate the group as she spoke. "A long time ago, when the ponies who first settled this land of wild magic still lived, many earth ponies struggled to thrive. Farms grew and prospered, overseen by those who connected to the Earth through apples or wheat or one of the many flora that crave the care of a pony. However, many plants will not grow in the same soil twice. Many earth ponies found an affinity to such plants, and travelled most of the time, filling saddlebags and travois with foraged plants to turn into dyes, spices, or thread. The many dangers of this land were far moreso in those times, so for safety and companionship the gatherers grouped together. When groups became large enough, the small tribes began to clash when multiple groups wanted to collect the same plants from the same area. Sometimes, the argument would last so long, with nopony able to gather without being attacked, that the roots grew too tough to eat, or valuable flowers wilted, or seeds blew away in the wind, leaving no prize for the victors.
This went on for many years, and the smaller tribes were forced to join the larger ones, lest they be pushed out of where they could gather the plants they knew. But once they grew too big, it was impossible for them to gather enough to support everypony without spreading out so thin they were vulnerable. Leaders arose, who saw the gatherers as a means to an end, rather than fellow ponies who did what they could to support themselves and their families, willing to leave behind those who weren't the very best at their work.
One of the many dispossessed ponies was a young stallion, who after being forced out of the group he had considered almost family, walked deep into a wild forest. Some say it was out of depression from having a romantic falling out with the leader, some say he was following a treasure map that he refused to share with the leader for free. Small details like that are often lost or shift as a story ages, even such an important one as this. I've heard the story told a dozen different ways, giving him many different names and palettes, so I shall stick to the bones of the tale.
Through luck or skill, he found an untouched treasure. A large clearing in the forest, where flora grew so dense that no young trees could compete for the light, and merely walking across it would crush enough rarities to trade for half a month of food for a pony. He gathered in secret, quietly trading for what he needed, eventually acquiring an old cart along with bolts of cheap linen, cheap material to hide the more valued produce.
With a cart, he didn't need to bring his harvest as often, but at the same time, he suddenly became a visibly successful pony. He had to invite other ponies to join him, for a successful pony alone was vulnerable to predators as well as others who wanted to take his success. Rather than build up his own tribe carefully, letting each new pony earn their trust, he rushed things so as much of the clearing could be foraged before the plants turned.
With promises of untouched rich lands close by, he easily collected many who were eager to make a quick small fortune. A small group set off with him to harvest as much as they could with ten days of water barrels, on condition that their leader got a share from each pony's harvest. Again, depending on who's telling the story, and if they consider him the villain or a good yet foolish pony, the size of his share varies, sometimes one or two in ten, half, or even nine parts in ten, which stretches things too far to be believed in my opinion.
Not all who had heard him joined up, most just passed it by as another pony's boasts, while some saw it as an opportunity to earn favor with a stronger tribe of gatherers. When they set out with their one cart, a few who were with them were spies with prior allegiances, while others who had been rejected trailed along behind, quietly following them. So, once the trail had been forged through the wood, and the first day of gathering had been wrapped up, another group had found the clearing.
When our hero saw the other ponies setting up camp in the forest, he began to worry. He worried about his employees being tricked, putting his forage in the wrong carts, or them simply giving them a better offer, they had no real loyalty to himself, or anypony else in the group. With the threat of ruin, he saw he hadn't made a tribe, but merely pushed together a crowd of strangers, even he wouldn't notice if another joined them.
Once he realized that fact, he was able to see a solution, taking one of the bolts of cheap cloth, he had ragged cloaks cut and tied, making sure everypony had one. He instilled fear of the others as best he could, promising the other ponies would gladly pull away their harvest without them, the other tribes would gladly take their hard work, while he knew how difficult being a pony without a place was, and so on.
The next day, What he had promised did come to pass, some tried to barge in with force or guile, but a cloakless pony was easily spotted and driven out." At that point, she stopped talking, taking a drink to let her voice recover.
Lavender, taking the long pause as a strange ending spoke up. "You wear those cloaks so you can kick out anypony that doesn't wear one?" she asked, feeling like she had missed a detail in the story. "Isn't that the exact opposite of what you just did for me?"
Heather licked her lips, and gave a small laugh. "That was why he gave them out, yes. But that's only half the story." She took another swig, and then continued to weave their tale. "The other ponies wanted to be able to harvest the clearing as well, but couldn't simply force the cloaked group out without hurting the forage as well. It didn't take long for the other ponies to see the pattern of the cloaks, and see it meant the ponies wearing them didn't really know each other. Soon newly cloaked ponies were walking into the clearing like they had just dipped into the trees.
It took awhile for the cloaked pony's leader to notice, but when he did, he wasn't sure what to do. His workforce was growing, but they weren't really working for him. When each pony filled a saddlebag, they were supposed to bring it to the cart and swap for an empty bag, but many were now taking full bags into the woods, and returning with empty bags.
To stop those who he saw as thieves, he demanded they change the way the ponies gathered, leaving their bags on the ground, and each gathering all the plants near the bags, rather than sweeping across, collecting only the plants they knew. A few ponies he was sure weren't part of the hidden enemy would then collect everypony's work, and bring it back, while he kept watching the forest for newcomers.
However, they were still able to sneak new gatherers in under the cover of darkness, and each day a larger patch of the clearing was collected from, while the cart filled much faster than he had hoped. He began to worry about being ambushed on his way back to town, especially since he was claiming a share of the harvest of many ponies who hadn't promised him anything. He began to worry about the water supplies, for even with careful rationing, what had been enough for ten days was nearly gone in five. But before he could find a solution for any of his new problems, the worst, possible, thing happened."
Each of the ponies had been awaiting this moment, and had each casually acquired a twig from the kindling. with a silent signal from Loom to synchronize them, they each loudly cracked their stick, the effect reasonably imitating a much larger piece of wood suddenly giving way. The sudden sharp sound caused the only one who wasn't in on the joke older than the sky to jump right up into it. Once the panic left her, she managed to join in with her own nervous laugh. "That wasn't funny!" she declared, even as the good humor infected her. "What happened? Did he break his leg? Lightning?"
Spearmint patted at her back to help her calm down, to show it was merely a good-spirited prank. "Nope! They had filled the cart with so much, the axle broke!" He explained with a grin. "Or somepony sabotaged the axle one night, or it was a cheap cart with a rotten axle to start with. I heard one pony say he was jumping up and down on top to fit more on." He looked over at his mother, and after seeing she had sat down to take another water break, he finished that part of the story. "It doesn't really matter why the cart broke though, the point is, there was no way a pony could could carry even their own harvest, and he thought he had a claim to several times that, even after the cart broke." The colt again looked over at Heather, who gave a little upward nod, letting him pick up the flow of the story.
With the story actually on his back now, rather than just borrowing it while Heather paused, he verbally stumbled a bit, now painfully aware everypony was focusing on him. Even though it was a story every other pony at the fire knew many different ways, it was no longer a one to one conversation. Gulp. "That's when things got kind of crazy. A few carts were pulled out of the woods, each with a few bags that had been hidden away into the forest. There was a whole lot of yelling and shoving as ponies tried to get at the pile that was under the hooves of the stallion who had found the clearing in the first place.
Then one mare climbed up onto one of the carts and spoke. She had been one of the infiltrators, but only because the only other option was to leave. Pegasi have magic of the air and the water. Unicorns have the magic of fire and the mind. Earth ponies have the deepest magic, drawn from the earth and the body. This mare had a simple talent, connected to the quiet voice of the Earth herself. When she spoke a simple truth, nopony could ignore it, or pretend the fact didn't matter. If she had spoken seven words to the dark princess, we would have an empty moon today.
"We had four days of peace, and collected more than we can carry, because we pretended to be friends." All the fighting paused as they all thought about what that meant. If four days of just gathering beside each other rather than fighting over what hadn't been picked, four months would make them better off than some farm ponies.
Gathering feels like a long chore, especially when you do it alone. Arguing or fighting feels fast, even if you're doing it for a long time, so most ponies didn't notice how so much of their time was wasted trying to push other ponies out of a field, or keep others from pushing them out. It would mean more travelling if more ponies foraged a space, but a lot of that wasted time would become more gathered plants to trade.
So everypony sat back, and let the finder sit of the pile of bags like a dragon on a hoard. Once it became clear that nopony would help him repair the broken cart, he pulled the lead poles from it, and made them into a pole drag. He put two pairs of saddlebags onto his back, another four he tied to the pole drag, and he left the rest behind. The three full tribes, as well as the ponies who had come out with the leader who had abandoned them, shared out the bags, each pony selecting a single one without looking inside from the pile, until there wasn't enough left to share out equally. The few leftover bags were emptied out over the clearing, and each pony gathered again, collecting a bit of what they wanted alongside the random picking.
After that, the groups parted ways, but they promised to keep the cloaks to show they wouldn't fight anypony who wanted to gather as well. When the cloaked ponies who shared the land, even with uncloaked ponies prospered, the idea spread, and others began to wear cloaks as well, always of undyed linen, because the cloaks were a message, not a piece of fashion. Ponies began to take pride in the cloaks, wearing them all the time, and to show who they were, they began to add patches of their symbol to the cloak, and then they gave out patches to family, friends, and anypony they made a connection with who had a cloak to sew one onto. Eventually, everypony who collected wild flax had made a cloak for themselves, and shared the wild harvest, claiming for themselves only what they already gathered up."
Watermint groaned as her brother wrapped up the story. "And that's why we don't let him tell the story." she muttered as she gave her empty bowl a flick, letting it roll back towards the fire.
"Huh? I thought it was pretty good, a bit strange how the first pony is kind of the bad guy, but that's not his fault," Lavender said, talking at her only half finished bowl.
"He forgot to even mention her name! The pony who found the clearing isn't in other stories, that's why nopony remembers his name anymore, he became the single story. Sooth Sayer has like, hundreds of stories about her, so it's impossible to forget who she was." Watermint began to rant about the perceived snub, cut off only when the only other unicorn gave a deep cough.
"I think forgetting a detail is a forgivable mistake," Loom said. "Considering he wasn't planning on finishing the tale by himself, and he tells tales so rarely, hearing even half of one makes me proud of him. The sun has set, the story has been told, the earth now sleeps, you should too." He stretched out his legs with a fake yawn, before tipping over to pretend to fall onto Heather.
"We'll be moving at dawn, to hopefully reach Gallopoli by tomorrow evening, so make sure you pick up before you get into the wagon," Heather told the siblings, before spending a few moments to give Loom a little revenge of her own. The edge of her hoof dug into his side as she pushed at his leaning body, eliciting a small yelp from the large unicorn,
Lavender slowly hobbled back towards the wagon she had woken up in, with Spearmint graciously walking beside her to be her support if she needed it. "Did you forget that story pony's name intentionally?" she asked once his sister had trotted on ahead.
The colt hummed, as if wasn't completely sure, then laughed. "I suppose I did. I never really liked the stories about her, they're mostly about ponies being crazy, with her pointing out the obvious at the end. The way she has a lot of her own stories, there's a possibility that she just snuck into the story because her special talent fit." When they reached the rear wagon, he unclasped his cloak, shook it out, and entered the wagon with it in his teeth, ready to hang up inside. in the fading light, Lavender caught a sight of what was obviously his cutie mark, even though his cloak was still blank.
"Wait a sec, your parents had blank patches for you, but you're not blank!" She protested as Spearmint disappeared inside.
Once she entered, she found there was now multiple mattresses laid out, three in a row nearly completely covering the floor, with Watermint on the one deepest from the entrance, and her brother awkwardly stepping on them as he struggled to get the cloak hung up before settling down onto his own mattress, close to the entrance and as far away from his sister as he could sleep, leaving the pegasus with the one in the middle. "Yeah, we got them two years ago now. We mostly grew up living by farms, parents didn't want to be moving around often, so we only went on short trips when other ponies wanted mom or dad's help. I brought back all sorts of plants to mom who would tell me everything I could ask. When she didn't know about a flower, I started to experiment with it. It tasted horrible, it was too small to collect fibers from, I couldn't find any part of it that made a nice color to dye cloth.
Sometime during my experiments, a spearmint plant appeared. The silly thing is, it shows the spearmint with flowers already open. Mint is valuable for the oil in their leaves, but the oil dries out when the blooms open, and its too late to gather. Last year, we collected the flax, and after we had enough, dad helped us weave it into our cloaks. This year, we're making the colored threads to make our patches, they take ages to make, and we each have five to make for starters, two for our own, and one each for parents and each other." He rested his head down onto the light mattress as he prepared to sleep. "I'm not too worried about my mark that says I'm worthless, stories are full of strange symbols that look like one thing and mean another, I'll figure it out eventually." He said quietly to himself with his eyes closed, as if he was trying to convince himself more than Lavender.
Watermint's half closed eyes reflected a bit of light, the rest of her a vague shape in the darkness. The pegasus felt more like talking than sleeping again, and so asked the unicorn if she had a watermint plant as her symbol. The two bright patches in the darkness shook side to side. "I think that one of the rules, is that only earth ponies get plants. The same day he was pulling apart flowers, I was washing newly dyed cloth with father. When I was having fun splashing around, my symbol appeared. It's a waterfall, even has a faint rainbow in it. But I haven't even seen a real waterfall yet." A small yawn was heard, and the glimmering pony eyes closed.
In the dim wagon, Lavender was left alone with her thoughts, unable to sleep as her body refused to settle after being asleep for a day, but she couldn't flee into the night to continue blindly north without disturbing the colt between her and the entrance, which now had a cloth door pulled down over it. As she rested, considering just staying up and leaving once the others fell asleep, she thought about how growing up with the twins as almost elder siblings would be like. Between the chaotic magical Watermint, and the meek, but intelligent Spearmint, neither had been actually mean to her, both welcoming in their own strange way. Their parents had been just as kind, but they felt more suspicious about her, less willing to accept her in the long term.
Part of her knew that they would gladly pass her back to the Istormbul authorities if they found where she was really from. The only thing keeping her with them was the fact no pegasi were looking for her this far out, or travelling all the way back to the city to tell about her. Silence about her past was her only defence, but even that might not be enough, until they travelled so far away not even a pegasus would connect her back to her old home.
When she heard the ponies quietly walking about outside, even when the twilight had faded, she realized that ponies were taking night watch duty, and escaping in the night seems a lot more difficult. As she drifted into chaotic dreams, her wings gave a small twitch as they went limp, the small weight lightly stretching the short tendons that wouldn't let them drop to her sides.
===
In another wagon, at the very front of the line, Heather and Loom sat by a sheet of linen paper, and a fine quill which was wrapped green magic. With no pegasus available to do a systematic search of the cloud towns where the foal might have come from, the only clue they had was rather weak, a single nervous look to the south. A letter was penned with both their words, explaining how they found the foal, and how she had developed a serious disability.
The couple were hopeful the letter would reach the right ponies, and so gave the details of their planned travels, to the east after they left the city, along with a description of the caravan, so they could be found by the air if the intended recipients took a while to receive the message. The letter described her palette and condition in detail, as well as the medical treatments that had been used on her. The only useful detail they couldn't offer was her lost name.
Once the letter was complete, folded, and sealed, they quietly held each other, each using their warm mate as emotional support as they tried to catch some sleep before their watch shift started.
When a trade caravan's crew is planned, many factors have to be considered and balanced. Endurance and strength of each of the prospective members, the weight of the wagons being pulled, and the terrain being covered all have to be taken into account. In simple terms, each of the small wagons, pull-able by a single adult earth pony, requires at least two members taking turns to have uninterrupted travel, while three lessens the stress on all, but that requires more supplies for the times they cannot live off the land. Additionally, the tethered rely on others to keep the wagons moving. Spotters make sure all the wheels are turning cleanly and guiding the wagon true, and a scout to survey the road ahead, digging at bad ruts and pits, and negotiating how to pass others on a narrow road.
With a caravan reducing the need for support ponies, a pony who wasn't on their shift under the yoke would spend most of their time alternately gathering or grazing in a line paralleling the road, and catching up with the front of the group. A pony who hadn't yet fully grown often took breaks in one of the wagons, helping keep the wagoner's mind occupied with conversation. Few pegasi and unicorns can connect with the deep magic of the world's heart for endurance at the level nearly every earth pony naturally had, so the few that did join in the long journeys of the Wander tribe's trade caravan were relied on in other ways. A neat paradox plagued many caravans, a winged or horned pony was a unique asset, but the sheer amount of supplemental tasks one could do could easily burn one out.
==~~*~~==
The quiet creaking of the wagon wheels only drove Lavender crazy for the first few hours, but eventually her mind adapted, and it became another one of the background noises, blending in with the footsteps and the wind. When the twins were in the wagon, they shared simple games, either ones of words, or placing stones into small depressions dug into one of the removable floorboards. Games which had winning conditions were played ruthlessly, with the minds of the twins evenly matched from years of constantly matched wits, resulting in a depressingly long losing streak for the newcomer.
Discouraged by failing to instantly grasp the deeper strategies, Lavender started to become less interested in the games, and when Spearmint tried to help by trying to play poorly, and explain how the pegasus made a strategic mistake, her mood darkened further. To salvage the situation, the twins played a light game, and at a complicated point, Spearmint asked Lavender for her new eye, letting them discuss the layout, and how effective each possible move would make. When all three were discussing the best move for the side side of the abstract conflict, a tension was broken, separating the emotional sides of the players from the tactical sides on the board. All three were able to find closer to equal footing, focusing on sharing ideas rather than hiding them for their own abstract victory.
They found the games beneath, setting up a situation and playing it several times, happily discussing how one apparently stupid early move could come back to ruin the opponent's attack, or a strong position could be hit at just the right spot to cripple it. When the wagon groaned to a halt at noon, the trio were trying to expand that kind of event to a grotesque; a situation that would be unlikely or even impossible to see in a normal game, with the goal to allow an apparently doomed side take over the board in a few smart moves.
After the noon meal which for most was merely a few mugs of refreshing water, her companions were ushered out to help gather on the final stretch into the city, and she was still struggling to walk at a normal pace. Standing without being able to properly straighten and lock her legs was a constant exercise, but a pegasus who hadn't needed to rely on strong legs as much as she had would have likely been in an even weaker position.
Once she figured out how the wagon cover was held down, she was able to undo one fastener and pull up a section to see out the front. When she tired of the struggles to stand and move her wings, she spoke with the pony who pulled the wagon, or whoever was walking alongside.
Back in her city home, school had been a mix of stuff she already knew, things she couldn't even use, and plain old boring facts. Just a day with these ponies had opened up new areas of interest that nopony in Istormbul ever considered teaching her. To them, plants were either trees, bushes, or flowers, and the cacti that grew in the natural deserts. Short over the shoulder lessons from Heather expanded her mind to just how many wildflowers and herbs grew in Equestria. And not just different flavors, the plants could affect a pony in so many ways, making their feelings change to happier or sadder, calm an upset stomach, or soothe a sore head. Rarer plants that grew in lands of wild magic could do even stranger things, such as heal a broken bone in minutes rather than months, open a mind to the speeches of the earth, or even permanently change a pony's palette.
The earth couldn't be completely generous, for each potential cure or salve the earth gave to ponies, balance had to be kept with a plant with the potential for malice. Many plants could make a healthy pony sick in some way if they were eaten, and some could afflict suffering with a mere touch. Laws of balance were tipped in a pony's favor, as the earth taught the first pony how to tell the difference with taste and smell, so now every pony knew a bad taste from a good one, even if they had never learned exactly how a certain plant could help or harm her.
When questioned further, the more accomplished storytellers taught Lavender about their oldest stories, when color was new and all ponies were one herd. Because of all the potential malice that was left growing in the soil after the first generation lived, the imbalance took to the air, twisting creatures into monsters. Some monsters were as big as mountains, rivaling the dragon's power, while others were so small they could sneak inside a pony and torture them from the inside. The earth saw her mistake, and to fix it, gave the plants which nopony wanted to gather vivid colors, which were then happily gathered to make into dyes and paints, and no land was again imbalanced by gathering.
***
"Heather, you talk about the Earth like it, um, she's another pony, but with special magic. Are you talking about another Princess who controls the plants and stuff?" she asked after poking her head out after a long thinking and stretching session.
"Another Princess? Oh no, not at all! The Earth is who we all walk upon, and she is just as alive as you or I. When the earth was young, she taught the first pony how to think, feel, and see. She helped each of her children know themselves and each other. Now though, her lessons are mostly spent, and she rests, trusting us to take care of her. She's not completely asleep though, she still quietly watches each of our stories.
"Earth ponies, and some of our cousins, if they have the desire, can find the place between being awake and dreaming, and listen to her memories and dreams. That's what many Wanderers do while they travel, our bodies travel while our mind listens to the stories of the Earth. But everypony, even unicorns and pegasi has the honor of being spoken to directly. When anypony, even those who grew into a different magic than her own, finds their place in the herds of Equestria, she gives them a name in her language."
Lavender blinked in confusion. "Her language? What language does a planet talk with?"
When the foal looked around, she saw how the sparse plains were slowly being taken over. Lone trees grew with branches in full bloom, while birds built nests in the forks of the branches. A cool breeze blew from the west, containing a hint of the sea. Clouds were being arranged by pegasi to shade a field where teams of ponies prepared to compete. For a while, she just looked around in confusion, trying to pick up some detail that would hint at the way the Earth named ponies. When she thought of one way that might fit, she offered the guess nervously, feeling rather silly. "You mean, cutie marks?"
Heather laughed at how nervous her impromptu pupil was acting. "That's what many ponies call them, yes. The Earth doesn't use words, she talks far too slow to use them, and she doesn't think in the same shape we do. She communicates with images and symbols. So do we, of course. Symbols are how most signs are written, telling what can be found at a place, or how to get somewhere. Her symbols are usually far more complicated, especially when it comes to the names she gives.
"Many ponies get a symbol that relates to their spoken name, like me. Named Heather, no one was surprised when that's what mark I got. But think about how many different ways "heather" could be depicted. A single bloom, a pair, three, or more. In the ground, or a vase, or pressed flat. Budding, blooming, spreading seeds, or dying. To the Earth, each detail is just another layer of meaning, and a detail can mean far more than one thing. I'm three heather plants in full bloom, tied together with a white ribbon. I like to keep the similar together, like you see inside. Sometimes I am the ribbon, holding together others." She took a breath, and in a quieter tone, like she was confessing a horrible failing. "Sometimes I'm the bundle, falling apart without someone there to hold me together."
***
As the caravan made the final approach into the trade district, full of stalls selling goods, most of the Wanderers left the group to run their own private errands. Collecting gossip, hunting down acquaintances from past visits to Gallopoli, seeking out a purchase, or just seeing the long docks where ships came and left for far off lands. Those who stayed with the wagons helped park them on a favorable corner of a large open square filled with ponies buying and selling goods and raw materials, and with surprising speed, they converted three of the wagons into shaded market stalls.
Bolts of the finest linen were displayed in one, and a customer could either take the purchase immediately, or have the cloth delivered directly to a commissioned tailor. The second displayed hundreds of tiny glass vials, each labeled with the picture of one or two flowers, the oils usable as either a scent to wear, or for the medicinal qualities concentrated from the plant. The last stall sold a much more mundane item, bottles of flaxseed oil. A common cooking oil, it was also desired by woodworkers as a finish for instruments and other fine work.
Around them, the market had been slowly winding down as evening approach, but the market savvy ponies of the more permanent stalls stayed open. City ponies would see the cloaked ponies in the city, and seek out the traveling tradesponies early to have the best selection. While they were there, many ponies hungry for dinner would see all the wonderful food for sale, from plain apples to rice buns wrapped in freshly harvested seaweed, and give into temptation.
Lavender saw all this from shyly peeking out through the lifted wagon cover. She would have loved to walk about to look at every meal for sale, and look in all the store windows. As the market crowd grew, fear of being noticed as the pegasus filly who couldn't even walk crushed her desires. Eventually she retreated within, giving in completely to the fear. Another whole day of stretching her legs' tendons had made progress, her forelegs needed just a few more precious degrees of motion to be able to stand straight, but the speed of her progress came at a cost.
Energy spent on the exercise left her with little now, and besides the leftover soup and small wild salads she had been served, she felt like her stomach was emptier than ever, and her legs ached from the workout she had given them. With nopony familiar around, and afraid to leave the confines of the wagon, she laid down on the bed, sore legs wrapping over her ears to try and block out the clamor of hundreds of strangers a stone's kick away.
A knock on the side of the wagon startled her, and when she looked up, a blue mare she didn't recognize poked her head in, her multicolored mane scattered around like she had been in a storm for hours, or had just taken off a hat.
After looking for the Wander cloak and not finding one, Lavender said, "Sorry, nothing in here, it's all over in the stalls." She put her head down, but the nosy unicorn actually started to climb in. "Um, you did hear me, right?"
"That's an odd way to say hello! We've met before, but we didn't get to make introductions." She walked up to the foal and sat. "This is a checkup visit for my special patient. I'm Bubble, the doctor who helped fix you up." As she talked, small shimmering spheres grew from the tip of her horn, wandering the small gap to rest on Lavender's coat, popping when she shook or brushed at the tickling things.
"Hey, stop that, it tickles!" She tried to back away from the bubbles after one landed on her nose.
"Oh, please, I'm sorry, they're just little spells, reflex habit. They help me learn about the patient, and I'm eager to see how you've recovered." She held her hooves up in supplication, the small bubbles gathering together above their heads, waiting for the patient's consent to continue.
"You're the pony that stopped The Rigors?" After realizing how slow she sounded, Lavender tried to cover up how she had made it a question. "Um, thanks. I still feel kind of weird though, I can't stand properly, and my wings, are, well, stuck." She fluttered her wings about uselessly to demonstrate.
Bubble closed her eyes, mentally reviewing the incomplete set of information she had gathered. "Yes, I see what you mean. From what I see, you're putting a lot of strain on your legs' tendons, but you've barely stretched the shortened ones holding your wings up. I'd think a filly like you wouldn't be happy until you're off the ground again."
Lavender nervously laughed, and got to her feet briefly, demonstrating how much her legs could straighten. "It makes sense to figure out walking again first." She said to avoid blurting out that her wings hadn't been much use before the accident, only to realize that the variation of the annoying truism was actually a good guideline in this case.
Bubble looked up at the foal, smiling with a mixture of amusement and admiration. When the foal stood, she had covered her mane in the little cloud of bubbles floating over her, which were now quietly collecting everything medically relevant as the light cloud of foam slowly dissolved; Heart rate, the fact that no colonies of The Rigors infection had resurfaced, her recent sleep cycles, and so on. "Suddenly, I'm a lot less worried about you." Seeing the confused look the foal wore, Bubble elaborated. "Many ponies who suffer a major setback, like a broken leg, try and rush things, forcing their body to behave like it's already healed, and can make the damage worse. You're rushing a bit with your legs, but those tendons didn't get as much lasting damage as the ones in your wings, so I don't think rushing the physical therapy will do any real lasting damage. Unfortunately, it will take a lot longer to recover use of your wings."
Lavender dropped to the mattress again with a sigh. "Can't you fix me with a zap of magic?" After a pause, she meekly asked, "How... much longer?"
Bubble gave a slow shake of her head. "I could, but the price isn't one I'd be willing to let you pay. Tendons naturally grow rather slowly, and disturbing natural growth in a foal can have dramatic unforeseen consequences. It could possibly completely disrupt the area's growth or worse. If you broke your leg, and then had it healed with the wrong spell, it's very possible you'd grow up, but the leg would stay short, which is so much harder to fix than taking things slowly and letting the body heal itself. Magic is best as an assisting force, rather than forcing your body to do something it's not willing to do." She stood, and walked around to the foal's side. She rested her hoof between the upraised pegasus wings, feeling at the unnaturally thickened rigid tendons. "As for your wings' tendons, they were seriously affected by the poison of The Rigors, since they were the closest to the injury, they soaked up more of the poison than the rest of you. Tendons heal slower than muscles or bones, they're not meant to stretch normally, and they usually grow only as fast as they need to. To make them better, you'll need to stretch them slowly, let them get used to being slightly longer, and then repeat."
Lavender squirmed under the unicorn's hoof, more from the humiliation of a pony on her back than actual discomfort. "But how long will that take? How many times will I need to repeat it to fix my wings?" She asked, pushing the question as Bubble seemed to skirt around the details.
Bubble sighed, looking down at the foal who had been through so much, and still had a long road to climb to become normal again. "Best case scenario, four times, maybe five. Probably closer to eight for the full range of motion. At your age, a full physiotherapy cycle would be about a season long, give or take half a month."
A long time. A month was a long time. A season was a long time. "Two... Years?" She squeaked, blinking back tears, seeing the span as closer to "forever" than "a long time". Two years to regain full use of useless wings. "How could anything take that long to heal?"
Bubble screwed up her face, wincing at the empathy she felt for the foal. "It's not that bad, I promise... It could have been so much worse. I did everything I could to help you. You're one of the ponies I could and did save, and in no time, nopony will even notice how close you were to a horrible end. Considering how many foals older than you that have wings that relax fanned rather than folded, I don't think any good pony will treat you any differently. You're a strong, smart, lucky pony, but if you try and find shortcuts, you'll regret it later." She connected with the foal's eyes, sharing the pain in them for her, while leaving unsaid how she had seen dozens of ponies who would see a two year recovery as a personal blessing from Celestia or a risky cutting edge procedure.
When another pony showed up in the entrance, he knocked at the wood to get their attention. "That filly of the big guy's is a real chatterpony!" the pale yellow stallion said. "Hey little chick, I got a little get well present for you, I wasn't sure if you prefer oil or wax for your feathers, so I got a little of each of my favorites." He pushed a paper bag forward that had been place on the wagon's floor before he redirected his gaze to talk to his mate. "She mentioned somewhere in her babbling that they were going to the baths to deliver an order soon. If you're not going to be much longer, it would be great to go with them, your treat."
Bubble blinked as her mental gears briefly jammed when she shifted from doctor to young mare. "Wait, what? You want to go to the baths, even though I had to drag you there just the other day?" She asked in a confused huff.
"Sure! They do discounts for members and friends of the Wanderers, so you'll save a few bits." He gave a brief half-lidded smile, and then thinking better of it in the mixed company, he twisted his face into a silly parody of a pony about to cry. "You owe me, especially after somepony nibbled at my wings in the on-call room!" He shook out his margarine wings, showing how the impressive span couldn't be properly displayed in the confines of the covered wagon, and that a majority of the large feathers had ragged tips.
Lavender barely registered the imperfection of the stallion's wings. In a city where everypony had them, an adult who showed them off would have been considered a little silly, or a braggart. When Lavender looked at the unicorn who had been moving to intercept him, Bubble had bright purple cheeks, blushing through her blue coat. "H-hey, that's not fair!" She stammered as she futilely tried to both hide from the pegasi while blocking one's view from the other. "Fine fine, I'll pay, just put those away before somepony gets hurt."
He bowed gracefully, wings folding up as he sank his head to the floor. "As you wish." He stepped backward out of the wagon, leaving a flustered doctor alone again with her slightly confused patient.
Bubble rolled her eyes in a long dramatic circle, silently expressing her exasperation with him. A large bubble materialized around the bag Cloudberry had dropped within, and bounced up off the floor as it rounded into a sphere, the contents floating free within. Somehow free of weight while within the bubble, a box and a bottle freed themselves from the bag, and the three items bounced about against the membrane as the bubble floated over to in front of Lavender. Curious, the pegasus filly raised a hoof, and a touch popped the magic, letting the items drop to the floor. The little absurdity was enough to briefly push away the depression of being landlocked. "Do you ever use normal magic, or do you just like bubbles that much?" She asked with a giggle.
The light blue doctor gave a small shrug, her head hunching up before relaxing. "I never managed to get the hang of... fancy word that basically means magic grabbing. Instead, I make bubbles. So I figured out how to use the bubbles to carry things for me instead." She looked down at the items, no longer in a neat bag, but in a haphazard pile. "It's not a perfect solution."
The admission of her own shortcomings more than made up for the fact that her mate had brought wing care products. At least neither of the items had a picture of a flight suited wonderbolt. Instead, the box showed an overhead shot of a pegasus mare who was obviously dyed up, with yellow and black stripes all over, even her feathers had the unconvincing stripes. Sprawled out on her side upon hexagonal tiles, she showed the predictable bee on her flank, maybe it was even real. The jar had simply a picture of a flower she didn't recognize overlapping a pair of outspread wing.
She hadn't been given a choice before, the extent of her experience with proofing her wings had been was being given was a few brushes of a faintly bitter oil after each bath. "So which is better?" She asked, rolling the bottle around between her hooves.
From outside the thin walls, Cloudberry replied like he had never left the wagon. "Should I get you some candles to munch on then, to save my wings? Honey and wax are as different as apples and wood, you crazy dame!"
The fillies both giggled at his exasperation. Lavender looked up at her small wings. "Seems kind of pointless to put anything on them, I'm not going to be flying any time soon."
"I can't force you to use them, I'm a doctor, not a parent. For what it's worth, I'll tell you that building good habits now means it'll be easier to take care of them yourself later, and many ponies do make judgments on how you look. Many see untended wings as a sign of laziness, or a lack of self-respect." She looked out the opening at the dimming sunlight. "It's up to you. You could ask the advice of everypony in the city and get thousands of bits of advice, but the choice is going to be yours. Same with every other hard decision, advice doesn't make growing up any easier." She stood up to walk to the exit, and turned to beckon to the small pegasus. "It's still worth getting and listening to though. Advice and information can help you see the possible roads open to you, so you're not stumbling along in the dark. Come on, give your legs a stretch and see the market, there's nothing to be afraid of."
After she put the small gifts back into the bag to put in the corner by some low-hanging bundles, Lavender followed the physician out into the evening market. Long shadows stretched from the setting ocean sun, where other sources of light didn't burn away the shadows. With the uncommon Wander Tribe stalls as a catalyst, a market that would normally be empty except for ponies packing up for the night happily bustled in the outdoor picnic as smells of food and sounds of music filled the air. Just looking around the side of the wagon, she felt like a spotlight was shining on her defectiveness and her state as a fugitive was obvious to anypony who looked at her from the milling crowd, even though the few who even met her eyes quickly drifted past.
When an earth pony colt headed toward her with a smile on his face, she almost turned to hide inside the wagon again before she recognized the gray face with the green mane that framed his face. "Feel able to walk a while?" he asked, briefly looking at her awkwardly bent legs, not quite able to stand still as she shifted her weight back and forth on the bent supports. "The bathhouse isn't far, a bunch of us are planning to go over there now that the crowd has slowed down, to deliver their order and get clean while we're there."
A teasing voice cut him off from behind. "Maybe you'll get all the dirt off your coat this time! Oh yeah, you're always like that." His sister said as she caught up. "Mother has all the things for the bathhouse spa ready, are you coming or not?"
Spearmint looked at Lavender with eyes dulled to the jibe that Watermint had coldly tossed at his gray coat, and turned to follow his sister. "I said I was going to see if Lavender wanted to come. The doctor unicorn is still with her, so your new crush is probably still around."
"Ooh! I hope he'll come with us!" she turned to look for the daisy yellow stallion, and then scowled at her brother, jabbing at his side. "I don't have a crush on him!" She exclaimed in embarrassment as her brother yelped and sidestepped away, balancing on three legs to rub at the attacked spot.
Lavender scowled at Watermint, unsure how to come to his defense without triggering more outbursts of her casual cruelty. Butting in with something other than the current subject would hopefully refocus attention from the small spat. "How about we start walking there now, and the adults can catch up? I'd rather not hold the rest of you up if I'm too slow, I don't want to be carried or something."
Spearmint nodded, and moved around to flank the small pegasus with his sister, mainly to use the young filly as a buffer between them until the perceived insult wore off. Looking past her, he gave a wave to the unicorn mare who was a paler blue than his sister's coat, and sported a variable mane with a variety of purples unlike Watermint's plain blond secondary coloring. "We're heading over there now, tell mother and father to catch up with you please!" After confirmation from Bubble, Watermint took charge, leading them through the market while Lavender walked alongside the colt, using his closeness as an emotional anchor against the crowd around them.
***
The bath house and spa occupied a long span of one side of a road that led down to a boardwalk which stretched out into the distance over the water, docked boats with publicly accessible bridges down to them acting as a floating city block. A little disappointed they weren't walking all the way down to the water, both of the young fillies paused to look out to the shining horizon. Watermint's mind filled with imagined adventures on faraway coasts which nopony had visited before, while the small pegasus saw the calm sight as more of a barrier, traveling across the ocean was impossible for her for at least a few years, unless she tried to stow away on an outbound ship.
"Are you coming inside or not?" the cloaked colt asked as he leaned against the door, keeping it open while they stared down the straight road to the ocean view. After they shook their heads to clear similar images of sailing away from their minds, they walked in. Lavender made sure to thank him for holding the door for them.
The lobby into which they entered held upon the walls pictures of happy ponies of all types, ages, and palettes enjoying the wide variety of services. The atmosphere was slightly more humid than the lightly salted air outside, and contained a blend of ever-shifting aromas, each faintly pleasant, but none were able to pin down and identify any of the scents in the air.
Following one wall, a small stream trickled along, barely enough to cover one's hooves, and an experimental touch proved the water to be pleasantly warm, trickling over a riverbed of a thick, brush-like carpet, perfect for scrubbing hooves clean upon. At the deep end, a courteously happy mare managed the entry and exit of patrons. The opposite wall was blocked off by a short bench with an attendant unicorn expertly accepting, filing, and retrieving garments and bags as well as managing the tokens which corresponded with each item. Watermint watched the glowing chaotic movement for a few moments before turning away with a wince, mumbling about how just trying to watch that tornado made her horn ache.
The three waited in the corner where water sprung up to stream down towards the entrance to the baths proper, as they waited for the rest of their group to arrive, each of them getting a feel for the water. Eventually, the grown quartet entered the lobby in two pairs, the mares followed by their mates, and came over to join the younger members of their party. After a quick maternal examination of them, Heather took her foals' cloaks to check in, while Loom and the other couple stayed with them.
Floating at a comfortably close distance above and in front of Loom was a small wooden box with an open top. After her gaze locked onto it in curiosity, it was lowered to Lavender's level, letting her see that it contained perhaps half a hundred small vials in individual cushioned niches, each with a specially colored glass stopper. She sniffed at the small bottles curiously, getting a hint of just how concentrated the contents were. Even sealed up a close intake of breath overwhelmed her sense of smell. "Whew, ponies wear that?" she asked after her head jolted away, shaking to clear the air.
Loom gave a laugh as he lifted up the box, turning to lead the way down to the attendant, who spotted his cloak and lit up at seeing a cloaked pony, identifying him from the several traits that created a rather memorable individual. The attendant offered her hoof to the stallion, who graciously touched it for a long breath, before stepping back and placing the carton of vials on the short counter-top. "Not usually directly, these are the base oils, which are usually mixed with soaps or other products to dilute them. These are so strong, you could dilute it to one part in a hundred and still feel the effects, some need even less," He said to Lavender as he waited for her to catch up. When she was beside him at the counter, he turned to the mare behind the short desk. "Your order has arrived, and of course they are all accounted for and intact," he told the attendant, who was already eagerly lifting them each out of their cushioning and replacing them in quick succession, perhaps looking for a specific favorite of hers.
Looking up at the stallion's amused smile, the bathhouse unicorn stopped looking through the carton like she was searching through a box of chocolates. "Oh, of course, thank you Loom Wander, I'm surprised it got here so soon, it's not even summer yet." She looked over at the three younger ponies. "I remember your twins, but your pegasus is new. Congratulations, you're so lucky to have one of each, and she has such a wonderful palette too!"
Lavender shrunk back at the close scrutiny, her wings fluttering nervously around. Loom came to the foal's aid. "Her name is Lavender, but she's not mine, we're taking care of her for a bit while her wings recover from an accident. She's a bit shy about them, she still has trouble moving them around." He quietly explained. Gesturing to the couple beside him, he also introduced his new acquaintances of Bubble and Cloudberry.
When Heather returned cloak-less, the young filly was being walked through the rules of the establishment. After she pulled off her mate's cloak and checked that one in as well, the group was ready to go in and get what felt like a month of road dust off themselves.
The bath house proper was divided into three large open sectors. Stalls with individual shower heads allowed for a quick cool down for a busy pony, as well as a place to apply soaps or stain removers. The middle division showed a series of baths recessed into the floor, each filled nearly to the brim with water. Each large communal bath had a short pillar rising from the center, with symbols and colors upon it showing how hot or cold the water was, how deep the bath was, and other information concerning the comfort and safety of the patrons. In the final division, an assortment of spa services were offered, from poni pedis to manestyling and massages, along with a few steam rooms.
For late evening, the current crowd was unusually large, but even then several of the baths were empty or nearly so, with foals happily using up their excess energy of the day splashing around while watchful parents genially chatted with each other.
After so many days of being utterly alone with nopony around to mandate her schedule, it had been a quarter month since her improvised and aborted ocean bath and longer since a real bath had been had, Lavender was surprised to find the cleansing to be rather different than the uncomfortable chore it had been in her former life. Primarily this was due to the significantly more noticeable feeling of purification of her orange coat and wings, but it was more than that; When Heather offered to help the foal who had twisted uncomfortably around to still fail at attempting to get her hoof-mounted brush up between her wings, rather than simply interposing, the earth pony subtly demonstrated how she saw the pegasus as an individual in her own right who she could help, rather than an obligation that she reluctantly managed.
Within the awkward zone of too old to mindlessly enjoy the splashing games of the younger foals, but still too young to fit in with adults, Spearmint and Watermint managed to find some fun by entertaining the younger foal. Using their bodies to force one small pool into a slow whirl or to create undulating waves that nearly splashed over the sides, they playfully tried to trip up Lavender as the water spun around her, who tried to stand in place without wrapping a leg around the center column to anchor herself.
The steam room was a surprisingly unusual experience for the pegasus filly. Clouds filled the room, hot and dense, but the steam clouds felt oddly different, and the heat as well had a different quality than that of a hot bath that was hard to identify. Rubbing at her forelegs helped clue her in, the steam heated up her coat and mane, but the skin was mostly insulated from the direct heat, creating an odd sensation where hair follicles were hotter than the surrounding surface, creating a feeling of prickling heat. The only other pegasus in the steam room, Cloudberry, was happy to play with the swirling clouds with her. Using a wing to scoop at it like a large net, he kneaded and sculpted at the gathered clouds with his hooves, dropping to the floor several large crude cloud bricks, which Lavender happily climbed up onto. Standing with small hard hooves between her and the steam which had been forced to stay still by the skill of the pegasus magic, she reveled in the amusement of the adults and the baffled experimentation of the twins as they both failed to duplicate her achievement and getting a case of hotfoot.
When the small cloud crafts were removed from the heat, they quickly shrunk in size as they cooled, and with them all compressed together, the large slabs of hot steam had condensed to a slightly over-sized brick which resembled slightly translucent smoked glass. With the strange and apparently useless affinity with clouds being the only part of her pegasus power that she still had available to her, Lavender decided to not leave the small cloud behind, dropping the almost weightless object onto her back, able to hold it up between her wings.
The pedicurists pretended to faint away when examining the sixteen hooves of the family, lamenting over chips, burrs, rough edges, and uneven corners on all of the cloaked travelers. This was apparently nothing they hadn't heard before, as it looked like Heather and Watermint were holding back laughter. The pegasi had less attention paid to their hooves, and despite the possibility that Lavender was the one who had walked the farthest in recent days, all the pedicurist deigned to do was apply a few choice rubs with a file and give a quick cleaning scrape before moving on, unknowingly demonstrating just how much of the role was showponyship.
Lamenting the state of the stallion's wings, a small unicorn stallion fussed over the feathers, carefully brushing them flat and applying a coat of a clear substance which quickly hardened when smoothed on. When he approached the foal, she fought to not shy away, looking to the other pegasus for an answer when he asked about what kind of proofing she would prefer.
The quiet but slow process allowed Lavender's thoughts to self assessment, seeing how even one who was right up by her wings apparently hadn't noticed how useless the animate feather dusters were. Plenty of young pegasi relaxed with their wings slightly fanned out when they could, it was hardly a matter of concern to other ponies most of the time. Of course, she had been in that exception area, where wearing a safety cloak without folding up her wings tripled how uncomfortable the item was, as well as the embarrassment of wearing it. Folding up her wings had been a necessity that became a habit, and eventually a preference. With the option ripped away, she had been thinking in terms of how other cloud dwellers would see her with her required safety cloak, and how nearly everypony she had seen which she could name wore a much more mundane cloak. Briefly, she envisioned how a Wander cloak could be modified to accommodate her wings, cutting holes wouldn't ruin a linen cloak, that dangerous modification would make a safety cloak tangle dangerously around wings as it opened.
After a final tending to their manes and tails to take advantage of the moisture's molding effects before they dried off, the group decided to call it a night. After retrieving their cloaks, the doctor and the mediwing said their goodbyes, thanking them for the wonderful time and giving last bits of advice along with friendly hoof touches and pats on the back.
Outside, time had passed in its usual way, the sun had set and the moon had risen. The pale shape that dwarfed its countless stellar companions had slowly but surely grown as it had watched the foal trek across the coastal shrub-land, the crescent gradually thickening until this night, it rose perfectly bisected, the moon's shadow hiding the specter bound there since times of legend.
The cool early night air refreshed their lungs, but also hastened them home to their wagons, a nervous silence wrapped in four billowing cloaks.
***
Lavender was the first young pony to awaken in the early dawn, thirst driving her to look frantically around for several seconds for the bag which had been her only method of gathering tepid drinkable water. Her mind finished awakening, and her current situation focused into place as she looked around at the gathered plants all around her, and the twins sleeping on opposite sides of the wagon. Carefully sneaking around Spearmint to get to the covered exit, she nosed the loose cover out of the way and stepped out.
In the early dawn buildings to the east kept the market square in shadow, and the place was almost creepy in the silence. Most stalls were bare, still awaiting the products and their proprietors, and sheltered between the wall of a building and the half circle of wagons stood a series of tents made from the same strong fabric that covered the wagons, the respite from travel allowing the full compliment of tents to allow everypony the luxury of room to spread out to their own private shelters. It was usually nice to sleep in groups, the familiar comforting smell of others making them part of a family even in dreams, and in the cooler times everypony shared the body heat, but even the closest groups need breaks from each other to let strained connections heal.
Gulping, she waved with the fore-hoof which hadn't stepped down, and whispered as quietly as she could, her dry throat making the whisper a squeak. "Morning. I'm Thirsty?" She spoke laconically, not wanting to wake up another. After he nodded in acknowledgement, she withdrew and waited while stretching out her forelegs, briefly trying to force the inner tension to give way until she found that such attempts were just making the tight tendons hurt more. A barrel glowing with Loom's green magic pushed through the curtain, making Lavender take a few steps away from it before it settled to the ground.
A few moments later, he emerged with a small stack of wooden mugs, which he separated out and placed atop the barrel. As he filled the first mug from the small spigot at the bottom, he talked quietly, not a strained whisper, just a calm voice that would blend into the background for the ponies who slept around them. "How are you feeling this morning? You look better than before, up and around rather than hiding all day."
Lavender sat and reached up to grasp the mug, sipping at it after the green field around it vanished. After clearing out the dry gummy feeling, she tried to explain a bit about how she felt. "I can stand well enough, I guess. Not sure about how I feel, all mixed up. Happy that you're all being so nice, but I don't know how long it will last." She drained the cup, and put it down by the spigot. "Woke up looking for these stupid dirty bags that I lost, they were the only way I could figure out how to get water, letting them soak up dew at night." She looked down in embarrassment, rubbing at the smooth cobblestone paving.
Loom looked at the small pegasus with a slightly tilted expression. "Your things are safe, we could get them from the wagon if you want them. I don't think you'll have much use for them, maybe a bit or two for the scrap metal. The market for salt is much better inland, away from the ocean."
She blinked, considering the suggestion. She had carried them along mostly because leaving them behind seemed like a waste, and a small part of her mind was strangely convinced that if she had left them behind, she'd suddenly find herself in a predicament that would need one to escape from. Selling the items hadn't crossed her mind, mainly since like most young ponies, she was mostly sheltered from the worries of money. Many ponies never even bothered with the small golden coins, preferring to trade goods and services with their community to fill modest desires. "So I need to go east if I want to sell the salt?"
The unicorn looked down, refilling the mugs with a sigh. "I was hoping you would be getting homesick, rather than planning trade routes." He returned to her the mug with a worried frown on his face. "You need to be with those who care about you. I know it's tempting to see the world, but you don't just charge out into the unknown alone, especially in your condition."
Lavender screwed her eyes shut, holding in an irritated mumble. What did he know about ponies who cared about her? At the moment, it felt like that short list only contained his family. "I didn't belong up there. I don't belong up there even more now. Up there, I was... am a defective pegasus that everypony worries about, but nopony wants. Down here, I at least don't have to worry about being pushed off the edge."
Loom understood her reasoning, but he still couldn't completely approve of her desires. He looked around, and hearing others stir, began to fill up the spare mugs. "Even if you want to live on the ground, there's a right and wrong way to do it. Just running away from everything and expecting a new spot to show up for you won't work, there's plenty of ponies who would be willing to help find a home you'd feel safe in."
She looked up at the tall pale figure, a stallion of whites and grays, the only color in his palette in sad red eyes, which she could feel were mirroring her own conflicted emotions. "I feel safe here..." She broke the connection, looking around at the tents and wagons, and beyond to the solid buildings which were starting to climb out of the morning shadows to show their true vivid colors.
"I'm glad to know that. We've done all we can to help you recover in mind and body, but you need things we simply can't provide. You need teachers and doctors, not a band of gatherers and market-ponies." After filling the last mug, he looked down at the young filly who seemed to be reluctantly taking his words to heart, even if they hurt. "I'm no pegasus, but I've got two good ears, I'm willing to listen if you want to borrow one."
Lavender shook her head, then rubbed the hair from her long mane out of her eyes as she stood up. "Thanks for the drinks," she said, quickly trotting to get away before she broke down in front of him. Through the market she went, stumbling a few times when she dodged to avoid a collision. Once out of the market by the same way she had been led the day before, she headed down the road, past the bath house from which the morning crowd's cacophony spilled out, and down the sloped road to a wooden boardwalk.
Brisk ocean winds blew in, bringing with it a mix of smells which could be relaxing or mildly unpleasant depending on who breathed the air. A variety of boats of many designs were tied to the docks below, with small two pony boats pulled up onto the beach, growing gradually in size the farther they were docked from shore. Far out, a pair of gargantuan ships sat on opposite sides of the complex, like two dragons sizing each other up.
The nearer of the monstrous ships stood tall in the water. Half a dozen slender masts rose from its vast wooden hold, sails rolled up as the ship slept in the harbor. She could see a few when they moved close enough to the edge of the high deck.
The farther one was an aged metallic relic, a quartet of steam chimneys rose high above the decks. On its dull ocean stained side, a single word was visible in block letters that might be taller than her.
With plenty to watch, she was able to let the worries of her own be dulled into the background for a while, and let the world move on around her. Rather than try and plan for the future, she let her mind fill with inconsequential things, like the sounds of birds, the wind and the waves, and the dull wooden notes as ponies walked across the elevated walkway.
***
When the twins finally tracked her down, the sun was nearly overhead. Her hungry stomach had made a few audible complaints, but it hadn't reached a point where she felt like walking back. Internal distractions were slowly pushing away the ability to forget herself in the sea breezes. One of the louder stomach gurgles elicited a giggle from nearby. When she looked around, Lavender found the twins on either side of her with their own forelegs also hooked over the edge of the railing, imitating her as she looked out over the edge of the boardwalk. Each of them stood a length away, giving Lavender her space.
After a few awkward moments of staring at Watermint's face, the unicorn asked, "so, why are you out here all alone? You're missing all the cool stuff in the market again!"
Looking back down at the water licking at the boardwalk's pillars, Lavender wasn't sure how to explain why she felt the desire to be alone. "You're all really nice, but I won't be able to stay with you forever. What about when I have to leave?"
Spearmint scooted along the rail, and touched at the orange shoulder beside him. "Well that's just silly. We might not see this city again for a year, or ten years. Just because we leave tomorrow doesn't mean we should waste the time moping about all the places we might miss."
"Tomorrow?" Missing the attempted inspirational message in the new information, the word she squeaked back was the sudden focus of her attention.
Both of the cloaked ponies laughed at the way her voice cracked on the word, but not unkindly. "Sure, we rarely stay in any one place for longer than a few days," Watermint explained. "Since we stay for only a few days, everypony in the city knows to buy what they want quickly, and we only need to stay for a short while. Each fact helps the other."
"Well, in some places we might set up for a bit longer, like if a city has two markets on opposite sides, we make sure to visit both so nopony has to walk too far." Spearmint said, gesturing in the air as he added to the explanation.
"Except for the market on the far side of Manehattan island, it's too difficult to get the wagons through the streets and back." Watermint added, willing to add the exception to the exception.
Rolling his eyes at his sister, he hopped back away from the railing and beckoned with his tail as he turned to leave. "Anyway, now that we found you, we can get you back before the last of the lunch selection dries up, unless you'd prefer to stay down here and eat fish like some crazy sailponies do."
"Ew! You've got to be making that up!" Lavender protested as she quickly followed.
***
To most ponies, the ocean is a mystery, especially when it comes to the life that grows beneath the waves. Besides the slimy seaweed that washes up on most shores, the underwater flora is even less well known than the broad categories of fauna. When washed and dried, the seaweed is seen as a delicacy inland, but a staple by the shore. This is hardly the only food the ocean has to offer.
***
"Oh just try it, it's not really hair, that's just what they call it," loom said to the hesitant pegasus, who sat by one of the wagon's rears and stared at a small plate holding a tangle of thick green fibers. Her first impression was that of a moldy hairball, which hadn't been helped when it was announced to be a serving of 'seapony hair'.
Screwing up her face, she tried to pry a few strands of the dish free, and struggled to choke it down. It was pleasantly crunchy, and a lot less salty than she expected a saltwater plant to be. With her tongue and stomach outvoting her previous classifications of icky food, the wooden plate was empty when Lavender spoke again, with a much happier tone. "They're like really long bean sprouts!"
Loom gave a wide grin and lifted up a few tendrils of his own plate to munch on. "That's part of the fun of traveling around so much. Sure, you could go all the way around Equestria and only talk to your friends and only eat the same old bread you grew up eating, but is that really experiencing new places?"
"New stuff isn't always good though," she said as she pushed the plate back to the large unicorn.
"And old stuff isn't always good. Most new experiences are worth having no matter if they feel good or bad, simply because the good ones will last a lifetime, while most bad experiences have important lessons. Even if it's just being able to understand how another feels when they have unpleasant events happen to them, every event in your life will teach you something." Loom carefully wove his words around the argument, trying to encourage the young filly towards an attitude of inquisitiveness.
"Yeah yeah, when in Roam..." she said, in a moment distilling a carefully thought out piece of advice into a phrase that everypony uttered with little heart.
Loom waved his hoof in disgust. "I hate those pithy sayings, most ponies just repeat them without thinking about them, and there's always one to back either side of the debate. Always be yourself, but do as the Roamans. Slow and steady wins the race, but the early bird gets the worm. Two heads are better than one, but too many cooks ruin the soup. Just because it's a phrase you've heard before, you shouldn't be quick to accept it as true."
Lavender laughed, immediately agreeing on the substance, if not the emotion of the point. "There's no place like home." She offered in a grumble, apparently considering the wistful positive saying as anything but.
"All places are different, you're not the only pony who considers, forgive the metaphor, that the flowers are sweeter on the other side of the road."
With a sigh, she stood up to stretch, trying to force away feelings of stiffness with nearly cramp-inducing extensions. "But there aren't any flowers that grow on a cloud."
With a nod of agreement, Loom also rose, swooping the last mouthful of seapony hair up into his mouth in a brief green glimmer. After it was down, he picked up the pair of wooden plates to return them to the wagon. "And that's why metaphors are unwise to use in an argument, since while there might not be flowers literally growing in the clouds, there must have been metaphorical flowers."
"Not enough to make the metaphorical manure worth putting up with," she grumbled as she walked to the wagon stalls which were barely visible behind the crowd of ponies browsing and buying the exclusive products.
As the last of the midday crowd began to disperse, the sales slowed to the point where it didn't take two ponies at each of the unusual stalls constantly wrapping or bagging or counting coins to keep the customers happy. The twins had done a share of the work, with Watermint eager to sell the fiddly essences, lending her power to allow anypony to have a vial opened for a sniff. Spearmint took a short shift helping measure out cloth orders, but worked slowly, measuring out each order several times before he felt sure enough to cut it, as well as often unfolding and refolding the fabric.
When he was relieved of the chore by another of the traveling tribe, he plodded over to the shelter of the shady side of the wagon he had called home since the last snows melted. After kicking a few of the sharper looking stones away from a patch of ground, Spearmint lowered himself down with a quiet huff as the cool earth pulled away the heat in his stomach.
Sharing the shadow with him was the young pegasus filly, who had apparently used the firm but not completely unyielding ground to scrape out the indentations needed to play the Wander's game. She was puzzling out the board, mumbling to herself, apparently oblivious to the attention.
"Would you do it again?" Spearmint asked in a near whisper after a long pause to carefully choose his words. When he spoke, her foot jerked in a startle, scuffing up the game.
She looked at him with a small tilted scowl. "Do what again?"
With a sweeping gesture to the city and beyond, Spearmint elaborated. "Come to the ground and the city, leaving behind everything and everypony that kept you safe and happy."
Lavender looked up at the sky, a clean blue canvas painted with streaks and splotches of clouds, young feral things from the ocean's skies that were too numerous to completely clear away, but no threat of a surprise spring shower. "Probably I'd be more careful around rusty stuff next time. I wasn't happy, and I wasn't safe." She turned back to the disrupted board, and began chipping at the hardened soil to remake the grid of depressions.
"You're young yet, I know you'd be careful about that now that you've learned the hard way, but there's so many other things you don't know how to keep safe from. There's plenty of dangerous, beautiful things out there which don't let you have a second chance. You don't even know what to avoid or how to avoid them, and it's simply dangerous for you to try and learn when... you're not in a proper and healthy condition." He stumbled over the end, blatantly trying to avoid her explicitly mentioning her disability.
Lavender briefly stiffened, her small wings twitching around as flight reflexes futilely tried to prepare to launch. "Sure, but up there is plenty of other dangers, ponies who are mean or just don't care, clouds evaporating or sinking, dragons, sky whales, windingos, and so on."
Spearmint sighed, resting his head down on outstretched forelegs. "I think you're brave. I think you're a little too courageous for your own good, but I'm also a little jealous." He laughed quietly at his candid admission. "You decided to try a different life because you got fed up with the one you started in, lots of ponies want to do that, but they're too afraid of the change and the risk."
"It's not that hard, I just started walking." She said with a careless flick of the tail.
"That's the hard part though, your life is something that slowly hardens until you can't change its shape without breaking part of it. Changing everything after the old shape is shattered can work, but then the way things used to be is gone, and impossible to get back, even if you go home you'll always be the pony who didn't stay." He said, the detail of his words hinting that he had considered it before.
After a moment, it connected together in Lavender's mind. "You want to leave this? But you've got everything, parents, even a sister! You already get to travel Equestria all the time, you already get to go everywhere!"
Spearmint laughed a dark note, closing his eyes for a moment. "They're a good family most of the time, and I do care about them, but," He paused and gave another world weary sigh. "I'm starting to think that just because I was born in a family of travelers doesn't mean I have to travel forever. I'm starting to think that even though she's always been there, I don't have to live with her forever."
She sorted out the smooth black and white riverbed stones, thinking over why he was admitting his discontent to one he hadn't known that long. "And you're afraid they'll hate you for wanting to leave?" She asked, looking up to catch his nervousness.
"That's one way to put it, but what's the alternative? Tell them after I've already found somewhere and give them no chance to prepare, or just vanish one day without warning? Those seem even worse." He stood briefly to get closer to her improvised board, and sighed again as he dropped down. "There doesn't seem to be any happy way to become truly happy, which makes me wonder if it really would."
Lavender rocked her head from side to side, her mind going in so many directions at once. He wanted a life free of the love-hate relationship with Watermint, a pony who had always had power over him and the will to use it, the same way dozens of mares and stallions had controlled her life for all the wrong reasons. "At least you're old enough that they'd let you go, I still feel like I'm not in charge of my own life. Even in a completely different city I'm just going to be dragged back, since if I leave your group I'll just die of thirst out in those dry plains, or go crazy drinking dew all night."
Spearmint rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Yeah, because the dozen farms and orchards a day's walk from here never bothered digging wells, they just drink imported rain," he said in a tone that went up and down several times, thoroughly coating it in sarcasm. "And if the water smells, you just need to boil it with a crushed ripe apple and a small lick of salt, and then pour it through a fine cloth."
"Boil?" She asked, intrigued by the change in topic. "Great idea, all I need to do is grow a horn and I'll be set."
With a shake of his head, Spearmint flicked his tail in the direction of the stone circle encompassing the hot bed of coals, the last life of an earlier fire. "Unicorns didn't invent the fire, and it's even easy to make your own if you have the right tools, a small sparker kit doesn't cost five bits."
She nodded in acceptance, not knowing exactly what tools he was talking about, but that was hardly her fault, in a pegacity fire was as rare as a unicorn. "Well if its that simple, I don't have to go back at all!"
Spearmint realized with a frown how his small bits of advice were being accepted as complete lessons on how to survive away from the big city. "It's not simple, it's not easy, and it's not fun. It's working all day long to be sure you have enough to drink for tomorrow. It's working all day to have a place that won't soak you too much if rain is scheduled for the area. No pony can live all by themselves in the wilderness! What if you got so hurt you couldn't walk as well, or lost something your life depended on?" He rubbed at his eyes with a groan. "Forget about age, that's not what's really important. You're not too young to live in any way that works, but you're too alone. Wait until you find somepony else that's willing to rely on you and the other way around."
She looked down at the board, and in barely a whisper suggested, "You could come with me..." and shied away from the older colt when he gave a sharp laugh.
"No offense meant, but I'm not going to trade away the crazy filly I already have for another." He said with a teasing smile. "You want the exact opposite of what I'm looking for."
With a quiet cough, a small turquoise horn poked from around the wagon, followed by the familiar flaxen mane as Watermint curled her head around the corner. "And who're these girls you're planning on trading around like barrels of apples?" she asked, pausing to look at the neglected game. "Did she just ask you to elope with her?"
Spearmint rolled his eyes at his sister. "Nothing like that, not really. We were just... borrowing each other's point of view on things."
After a pause with a funny look on her face, she shook it off and got down to business. "Well then, since you've had plenty of rest in the shade, time for you to earn your oats again. Tailors, dressmakers, and whatever the fancy word is for pillow stuffers are all waiting for ordered cloth, and we're going to start delivering them now. And by we, I mean you."
He stood up, stretching out each leg in turn as an excuse to delay the chore. "Haberdashery."
"Gesundheit," she giggled.
"Ha ha. I guess that's my time gone. I'll see you later," he said as he trotted off back to the cloth wagon.
***
The afternoon was pleasant enough, but with all the thoughts going through Lavender's mind, playing solitarily didn't do much to reduce the restless feelings that were building. A thorough wander around the marketplace was taken, but without any bits, she couldn't do much more than try a few sample strawberry chunks left out for customers to sample.
After a short conversation with Heather, the saddlebags which had kept the pegasus alive for the dry week were retrieved from the storage of the water wagon. The cloth had been washed, but while the bags were clean, it was unlikely the green tinge of grass stains would ever come off. A little insistence was all it took for the short mare to disregard her confusion at the insistence to keep the bag in the wagon which had been her bedroom for the last several nights.
By the time Spearmint finally returned, the Wander tribe's communal supper soup had been in the pot for hours, the large amount of water seemingly able to absorb heat indefinitely without boiling. Hungry cloaked ponies wandered in and out, each of them taking a peek at the surface of the steaming water while Loom sat patiently, slowly stirring it around unnecessarily.
Many tales were suggested to be told, but they were only discussed by those already familiar with them rather than told, as if it was impolite to fill up on stories before filling up on soup. Tales of impossibly ancient events were discussed like they had only happened last spring, and she briefly felt surrounded by a warmth of family that was like the mirage of water all over, only to fade when she felt too close.
Mentions of stories she had never heard flowed around with stories she was familiar with: The climber of the mountains. Wave tamer. The last great migration. Hearth's warming. The first pegasus. Her ears perked up at those words, but she was unable to discern who had mentioned that, a story she knew she wanted to hear, but had never had an inkling to asking about it from anyone in her short life. But before she could ask, the tone of the crowd shifted, hushing for a moment as the soup announced that it had reached a rolling boil.
The large cloaked unicorn started to dish out the scalding hot meal as fast as he could safely do so. A mildly salty and spicy soup full of rice and numerous chopped green things, enough of the water had been steamed away for the meal's consistency to be closer to that of gruel, but with a flavor that put it above the crude term.
The story of the evening was led by one of the Wanderers who's name she hadn't learned, and revolved around several concepts she couldn't quite understand. In the oldest stories dredged up from the quiet long memory of the world, the rules hadn't quite been finished, and so the first ponies could do what now seemed nonsensical, like trade tails with a tiger, or talk to a rock and get a response. In the strange wandering narrative, a colorless world of black, white, and gray lay beneath a sky which was every color of the spectrum.
During the meal, a love story between a white pony and the sky was told. The sky gave the early pony a colorful palette every morning, but by the time the sun set, the color had been given away to something else in the world, until the sky was one color for most of the day. The sky mourned the inability to find the palette which made the pony happy.
Only when they truly talked did the sky see how the pony was trying to make the world beautiful for all, and only then did the pony see how little was left in the beauty of the sky. Long story short, the pony gave away every piece of herself, until she was only mist. The first cloud to rise into the sky who had sacrificed so much to get the pony's love, and even now, when the sun and the clouds are just right, a little piece of the sky remembers what it was like when the world was young.
"That was a weird story." Lavender said to Loom and Heather, fighting back a yawn as ponies drifted away to their tents. "Could you tell another? I heard somepony mention the first pegasus, I'd love to hear that one!"
Rather than a story, all she got was soft touch on her head from the small mare. "It's getting late, there will be plenty of time to tell that story another time."
***
The next morning, the young inhabitants of the herb wagon were woken rather early, to help pack away tents and transform the shifted wagons out of the state of being market stalls. Sleeping in would have been preferable for Lavender, but the noise as everypony got ready to leave on the first sight of the sun made this annoyingly difficult.
When all the preparations were complete, and goodbyes had been said to the local merchants getting ready for the early shoppers, Wagons creaked into motion as they left Gallopoli's market. When they left the city towards the rising sun, many of the cloaks' hoods were pulled down to shade eyes from the morning glare, and content to be still heading towards adventure rather than back to the city that was once her awful and boring home, the pegasus felt she had finally found something close to a good family, and a name that matched her properly. Content, Lavender went back to finishing that night's sleep in the company of the hundred wonderful scents around her.
If the caravan was planning to spend all the day heading east, they likely would have waited until the sun was higher in the sky. Barely an hour out of the city, the first real road south was reached and taken. A six pony wide dirt path worn flat by a million hooves since it was first surveyed, it ran mostly straight between fences which marked off land full of grain, or occasionally enormous vegetable gardens or orchards.
With little to gather, most eagerly galloped on ahead, drumming up potential customers from the farmlanders, or haggling over sacks of the local crop to keep the group fed. As the day peaked and faded, it only became apparent to the young runaway their heading when the group stopped traveling at a crossroads, making it clear to even a novice navigator that they had reached the stopping point by heading south.
When she asked Heather about when they would reach the next city when the small but sturdy mare was unhitching herself, she paused for a long breath before responding that it would be days and days, and told her to enjoy the journey rather than focusing on the destination. Lavender nodded in understanding, and walked off to take a look at the nearby farms.
The evening meal was a pleasant change from the soups and gruels she had been given as well as the bare sustenance that had kept her moving on the dry shrub-land, the edge of which was a single field to the west. After freshly baked bread rolls with a creamy cheese filling and shared bowls of cherry tomatoes full of flavor like tiny balloons waiting to be popped, Another tale from when the world was young was told. Despite Lavender's begging, the pony who had been granted the role of storyteller sung a tale in a quiet voice, unsure of the notes he found.
In the young world of color where all ponies were one herd, unworried by the maliciousness rooted and waiting to rise, a strange one was born, the first of a new herd. Cast out for being different, the new pony had to grow up alone. Once grown to maturity, he had strength that no mare could match, and returned to take over and rule all the others. For a season he fought, and with all contest defeated, he ruled in all imaginable luxury. However, soon more of his kind were born to the world, and fearing competition, he banished all who could take his place. As more saw that the new foals were not evil, and that any of them could have grown hungry for power after being unjustly exiled, the first mothers left the herd as well, willing to protect the new foals who were still innocent of any wrongdoing.
The first herd slowly fractured, each year half of the first ponies leaving the herd rather than leave their foals, until only one remained, who had never had a foal of her own. Too afraid to run away, she begged The Earth for child who would please the one who had shattered the herd. The Earth awoke from the pleading fear, and saw how the shatterer had grown up as a wild beast, with none to teach him words, awaken empathy, or give him love. It was too late to bring everypony together again, but the deep magic of the Earth was able to at least fix the worst of the pain caused by the fear of the first towards the now old foal.
The Earth taught the last of the ponies she had awoken of wild magic bound by the quiet will of the world into the rarest of flowers, and in particular of one which granted the deepest wish of anypony who was willing to search for one. When she finally found the flower we now call heart's desire, she offered it to him, telling him of it's properties.
Promptly saying that he wanted all the mares to return to him, he ate the flower. In moments, his heart's desire was granted. Of course, not his wish to be again ruler of all ponies, but his heart's desire to have not been cast out to grow up alone. All the years melted away in moments, and with them, memories of loneliness and hunger, until he was little more than a foal.
A mare and a foal is not a herd, and so the first herd was gone. Soon they found others who welcomed the lost sister and new foal into their lives, and from then on, nopony was banished from their family because they were born.
***
"Your stories are really weird." Lavender said to Spearmint as she sat by the entrance to the wagon, looking up at the stars. The slightly more than half full moon lay low on the horizon, its current shape resembling nothing within the young pegasus' realm of knowledge.
Spearmint gave a small laugh, and nodded in agreement. "Sure they seem strange, but I bet in a thousand years, the stories made today will seem just as strange, but the stories told then will have all the same things." He gave a small sigh. "Change is hard, but worth it. It's natural to fear something new, but that doesn't mean you have to. Love is possible for everypony. Fairness is worth fighting for."
"Still, it's strange to blame the first unicorn for breaking up the first herd." Lavender said with a little huff.
"The story doesn't blame him, and he wasn't a unicorn." Spearmint tried to correct her assumptions and interpretation, but was quickly interrupted.
"So what was so different about him? I know it wasn't because he was a pegasus." She scowled in confusion, shaking her head as if denying his corrections.
"He was different..." he said, trying to find the easiest way to explain in a pause. "...because he was, um, a he."
Lavender shook her head again, feeling doubly confused. "So you blame colts for everypony not being the same herd anymore? That's worse!"
Spearmint smiled, reaching out to nudge at the younger pony's foreleg. "Glad to hear you think so. But we don't blame colts for that happening, anymore than I'd blame all pegasi if one pushed me over. At one level, it's hard to blame the one who actually did it in that old case, perhaps the blame falls on those ponies who were unwilling to care for him as a foal just because he was a slightly different shape. You could even go back further and blame the Earth for letting them do it. Blame doesn't help anyone, that's what forgiveness is for. That's what really heals problems, not revenge or separation from the problem."
Lavender sighed, clearly getting the subtext of his words and the story. "Forgiving someone who doesn't want it doesn't help though," she grumbled. "I can't really get revenge, at least getting away from the problem means I don't have to have it."
"True, but it usually means you end up with harder problems. That's what you end up with if you're alone. If where you live isn't right, fight to change it in the proper way, so you won't end up on a road with nopony around to help you. But tomorrow, you'll get to appear from beyond the grave with as many stories about how strong and dependable you are to share with your peers as you can remember or imagine." He said with a grin.
She sighed, never being one to want to be the center of attention, it didn't feel like any of her adventures would actually improve how other pegasi saw her. "Wait, what do you mean tomorrow? I thought it was going to take several days to get there!" she said in alarm, hissing her words as she tried to not yell them.
"Oh yeah. It will, if the city doesn't send some pegasi to chariot you back sooner, which might not happen." He sounded resigned, unwilling to hold back the ruse that had somehow been slipped to him.
Lavender stood up and climbed into the wagon, suddenly realizing her short life of freedom was nearly at an end if she didn't act. It would cost her nearly everything she had found in her short time on the outside: Real friends, of a sort. Ponies who wanted her to be safe. An ordered life and education of things that really mattered. All being shredded in the wind of wings that were not hers.
Inside the wagon, her saddlebags containing her only possessions lay in a corner, clearly empty. As she frantically whipped her head around, looking for the jar of salt and scrap metal bar, Spearmint stepped inside.
"I knew you'd run as soon as the pressure came." He said sadly, stepping over to one board near the middle which he flipped up with a press of both fore-hooves, revealing in the under-compartment another set of saddlebags, this set properly sized for a young pony. He pulled the bags out and put it down in front of her, before flipping the compartment closed. "Honestly, I'm too jealous to stop you if that's what your goal in life is, but I'm not too uncaring to let you leave without a chance. There's nothing in there that isn't mine to give. If you really have to go, you have to see that you'll be hurting a lot of ponies who care for you." He stepped back to another panel, which he opened to retrieve sleeping mats and sheets. "Everypony here wants you to grow up somewhere safe, as well as all those who make it their life's work to take care of all the fillies and colts just like you."
Lavender watched as he solemnly set out the three sleeping mats, and laid down to pull a sheet over himself to keep the drafts off. "If they were the only kind of pony in this world, I would go back in an instant." she said slowly between grunts of pulling on the already loaded saddlebags, much more difficult than loading them after. She looked down at the gray colt whose dreams she was acting out, and after a hesitant moment, she leaned down to him, nearly kissing his ear. "Thanks for trusting me." was all she could think to say before peeking out the curtain, and after looking around, jumped out into the early night, and after she was sure nopony had noticed her exit, she headed off into the night on the inland road towards a moon that showed the first hints of the greatest terror of the night.
==~*~==
"What do you mean she's gone? Is this some sort of joke?" The officer yelled at Loom, who was looking unfazed from the pegasus's words, possibly due to the unicorn's extra hoof of height.
While he was large, Loom was not one to easily escalate a bad situation, always preferring calm reason over heated emotion. "This is not a joke, merely an explanation of what happened."
Repeatedly the pegasi interrogated the members of the Wander tribe, always getting the same crazy story. Being ordered out on a milk run before even having a full night's sleep due to shortages had put them all on edge, especially when it wasn't turning out to go as planned. But the witnesses they had sworn would corroborate how they had been in the company of an orange and purple pegasus at Gallopoli, and they hadn't been anywhere near Istormbul where they might have actively hampered rescue efforts, there wasn't anything that could be actively done to them without countering evidence.
While one of the trio was unfortunately selected to keep watch over the caravan with crazy claims in case for some reason they tried to flee, the others made a token sweep of the surrounding area for any sign of the filly foal who had been missing and presumed drowned for half a month. With no signs spotted by the bleary-eyed fliers, they returned to the city station to offer updates and if possible, pass out immediately after.
***
There wasn't a single part of her that didn't hurt. Hooves were all sore from walking and running all night. All her legs, doubly so. Carrying bags that felt like they doubled in weight every hour made her back feel like it was being cut in half, and her sides felt like all of her coat had been removed with sandpaper. Lungs burned from all the air she had used that night, and her stomach clenched in empty hunger. As the sun's first rays appeared, they stabbed at her eyes, killing her night vision and reminding her just how tired she was.
The grove of trees she had found offered some shelter, a hollow space out of the wind inviting her in like a five star hotel for squirrels. In the hollow, she collapsed, and finally took the time to look through the bags she had been given.
Two oilcloth pouches full of fresh water, one of which was instantly opened and drained. A bag of carrots, as well as a few paper pouches with pictures of other vegetables, probably seeds. Another cloth pouch which held the collection of black and white stones, as well as eight bits.
Finally, besides her jar of salt, she found a bundle of plain raw cloth, which she carefully unfolded in disbelief. A blank wander cloak, just a little too big to have been made specially for her, but with roughly cut and sewn wing slits, wrapped around two tiny vials, easily identifiable from the labels as lavender and spearmint oil.
After staring at the gifts she surely didn't deserve, she pulled the cloak hastily over herself, and struggled to crush the tears that slowly welled up, which eventually she sank into and slept.
