Radiowaves

by mushroompone

Rating: everyone
Tags: Romance, Night Glider, Clear Sky, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mystery
Length: 20110

Night Glider spends the summer as a fire lookout in Smokey Mountains National Park.

Night Glider, having a difficult time readjusting to her career as a search-and-rescue worker, takes up a position as a fire lookout in Smokey Mountains National Park.

Though she is physically isolated from the rest of ponykind, the voices on her radio ensure she is never truly alone.

Winner of Bicyclette's Crackship Contest!

This fic is heavily inspired by Firewatch, but should be enjoyable to all - those who have played and those who have not.

Published 2022-03-15 05:30:00 UTC
Last updated 2022-03-15 05:30:00 UTC

JULY

If May was the summer’s dawn, and June the full light of morning, then July was surely the droning hours which hovered about noon. July could only offer the highest, hottest days of the summer… and yet, it was easier, somehow, than June. A familiar, predictable heat which quickly became surprisingly bearable. A constant sheen of sweat wiped from one’s upper lip. White-hot sunlight beating down on the top of your head.

Despite its familiarity, Night found herself venturing out after sundown more and more often. The coolness of the evening was comforting to Night Glider, not to mention the constant symphony of crickets and cicadas to keep her company.

Sky was a bit of a night owl, too, it seemed. While her days were spent weather-forecasting, her nights were her own—and she was sure to take advantage of every one.

“Alright. So my little map says you should find another recording on your…” Sky trailed off, obviously orienting herself to the massive map on the wall of her own tower. “Your right. Wait, left! Wait…"

Night Glider leapt atop a small log, waiting patiently for Sky to finish her muttering.

"Left," Sky said. "Final answer.”

Night shook her head, snickering to herself as she turned off the trail and headed deeper into the woods. “I dunno, Sky. I think your little map might be more wishful thinking than anything else.”

“Tsk. You just don’t get meteorology.”

Night let out a single, sharp laugh. “Right, right,” she said. “I forgot about the required classes on ghost forecasting at weather school. My bad.”

Sky did not reply. Though Night had quite literally not a shred of evidence, she always believed this to be her way of concealing laughter. It brought a secretive smile to her face.

“Did they not have those classes at your weather school?” Sky asked, barely maintaining her facade of seriousness.

Night was caught a bit off guard by the question. “Uh. I actually didn’t go to the weather—to the flight academy,” she said, carefully correcting herself. “I was trained differently. Because of my talent.”

“Oh.” Sky seemed to experience a moment of genuine confusion. “I—sorry, I thought you were a pegasus. I don’t know why. I mean, for hoofness’ sake, I’m a unicorn.”

“Wait—you’re a unicorn?” Night repeated.

Sky laughed, this time not bothering to hide it. “Okay, okay. Let’s try it this way: Night Glider, what is your very special talent?”

Night smirked into her chest as she clambered over a rather large root. “It’s, uh… kinda stupid,” she admitted softly. “I’m a precision flier, particularly at night. I-I just have really good night vision. That’s why I did search-and-rescue—they always need more ponies willing to work the night shift.”

“Interesting,” Sky mused. “And you went to a specialized school?”

“It was… like a sleepaway camp, sort of. The Cloudsdale flight academy tends to train pegasi for flying, like, way up in the sky. In the cloud layer,” Night explained. “But precision fliers can’t depend on that sort of open space for flight. Plus, we don’t need to know any of the actual weather science mumbo-jumbo.”

“That sounds intense,” Sky commented.

Night shrugged, even though Sky couldn’t see it. Or perhaps because she couldn’t. “I didn’t really have anything better to do with myself at the time,” she said. “I, uh. I lost my mom pretty soon after I got my cutie mark. Sending me to woodland survivalist boarding school was my dad’s easiest option, I think.”

There was a long silence.

Night tried not to think much about it, and tried not to keep talking. That was the hardest part about these things, she thought: stopping the word vomit before it overtook her completely.

Instead, she focused on the path ahead of her. One hoof in front of the other.

“Night, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was a…” Sky struggled to find the words. “I didn’t realize.”

"It's okay. In the past," she said, though she hardly believed it. She quickly shook the heaviness off and returned to an almost teasing tone: "Clear Sky, what is your very special talent?"

Sky chuckled, but it didn't sound quite the same as usual. It was terse—almost forced. An awkward thing.

"Um… well, I'm in weather forecasting. My talent is in weather magic—just like pegasi—but I can't exactly do much with it being a unicorn," Sky explained. "Both my parents were pegasi. I was a bit of a surprise. I think I'm still a bit of a surprise to a lot of ponies, to be honest."

"Certainly surprised me," Night Glider replied.

Sky said nothing. Night figured she probably wasn't laughing this time.

"It's weird that I didn't know that," Night said softly.

A pause. "Didn't know what?"

"That you're a unicorn," Night replied. "I guess I feel like I know you pretty well by now, but I think part of me still pictures you as… I dunno. A little yellow radio, I guess."

At last, a laugh. "You picture me as a radio?"

Night huffed softly. "Shut up."

"Am I a cute radio at least?"

"Maybe we get off the radios for a bit and listen, huh?" Night suggested, powering through the sentence with everything she had.

Silence.

A good silence.

A laughing silence.

Funny how quickly she had learned the difference.

As Night continued her tromp through the woods, she did her best to picture the pony on the other end of the radio. Knowing that Sky was a unicorn gave her something to fill in, at least. A basic outline that she could scribble in with colors and shapes and swoops and swirls.

She sounded tall. Something about the smoothness of her voice, that deep undertone… she was definitely tall. At least a head taller than Night.

And she was so bright and bubbly. Night had never heard her any less than content, and very often she was outright glowing with joy—even through the radio. So bright colors. The colors of the sky.

A bright blue coat. Springtime sky-blue. And a mane like clouds; curly and weightless and white, with streaks of yellow like the summer sun.

"—time to think about going back?"

Night froze.

For a moment, she had seen it come from Sky’s lips. Her imagined lips. But the form dissipated into another, fuzzier form: a more mysterious figure yet.

Under the whistling wind was, indeed, the hum of the radio. It was a sound that made Night’s hair stand on end, sending a pricking sensation from her scalp down her spine.

“Going back?” the stallion replied. “You wanna go back?”

The stone under Night’s hooves shifted, and she stumbled forward a few steps, falling against a tree.

The radio hummed.

“We can’t stay here forever,” the mare replied, forcing a laugh.

“Why not?”

“Why not?” the mare repeated. “We’re in the woods! I thought this was a… a romantic getaway!”

“It is,” the stallion assured her. “But… babygirl, you have to admit it’s nice to be away from everything else.”

The mare grumbled something in response, though the exact words were unclear. Perhaps they weren’t words at all.

“Isn’t this so much easier without all those distractions?” the stallion cooed. Night could practically picture the way he must have nuzzled into the mare’s neck as he spoke. “Just you and me. In our fairytale.”

There was a long pause. The sort which suggested a musing, a mulling over. Looks exchanged. Wordless thoughts.

The mare chuckled. Husky and deep. “A little longer. Maybe.”

“Perfecto!” the stallion exclaimed. “Let’s claim our territory then, hm?”

There was a quiet rustling, then a sharp and shiny wish-click! Night recognized it instantly as the sound of switchblade.

The mare laughed again. “That’s a pony tool, dope.”

A harsh sound. Sudden scraping, long and low.

The radio fizzled out.

“She’s not a pony?” Sky asked no one in particular.

Night sighed. “That’s what we get for assuming, I guess.”

“I think I got it all down,” Sky said. “I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that these two came to the woods for the same reason everyone else does.”

Night scoffed. “And what reason is that?”

“To escape,” Sky said simply. “I don’t think there’s another place in Equestria so completely cut off from the real world. I told you before: ponies come here to get away. No one with a perfect life is going to isolate themselves from everyone they know and love for five months.”

Maybe that was true.

It was hard not to hear it as accusatory.

“Hm,” Night replied.

Sky held her tongue a moment longer, almost as if she were willing Night to reply.

Night did not take the bait.

“Well. Theories?” Sky asked.

Night furrowed her brows. “Theories on what?”

“The voices,” Sky said. “Where they’re coming from. Who they are. We’ve been chasing them for a month now—I feel like we know so little.”

“Does it matter?” Night answered. “I thought we were… y’know, doing this for fun.”

Sky didn’t answer.

“What do you think?”

Sky thought for a moment. “I’m not sure.”

Night sighed. Her head dropped against the tree she’d been leaning on. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Me neither.”

The sounds of the woods swallowed her up. Crickets and cicadas. Wind in the trees. The memory of heat radiating up from the earth beneath her hooves.

Perhaps it was silly to pour so much into chasing the voices. As much as her heart fluttered in her chest when they caught them, Night couldn’t ignore the feeling of subdued emptiness which filled her when they petered out. Never an answer. Never so much as a name.

Night pushed off the tree and held the radio to her mouth. “I think it’s time I head back,” she said. “Getting late.”

Sky was quiet for a long moment.

Night tried not to overthink it, and resisted the urge to say more. To apologize. To explain herself.

It was a difficult urge to resist.

"Hey, uh…" Night Glider cleared her throat. "What do you look like, Sky?"

A pause.

"A little blue radio. Sorry to catfish you like that."

A smile curled on Night's lips. "You know what I mean."

Another pause.

"I've never really thought about it before," Sky admitted. "I have, um… a pink coat and a long mane. Also mostly pink."

The image in Night's mind shifted. "Hm."

"My snout turns up at the end, which I hate," Sky went on. "And I have these stupid tiny ears that I hate. And, um… I dunno. I guess my face is mostly fine otherwise."

Night shook her head and tried to hold back the embarrassed laughter in her voice. "Anything you actually like?"

A pause.

"Honestly?"

"Honestly."

"I have… really nice pasterns." Sky made a small sound, as if admiring the joint above her hoof. "I don't know what I did to deserve them."

Though Night couldn't exactly picture what a really nice hoof joint looked like, she made a note of it. Something to look out for; when, she didn't know.

"Your turn," Sky said.

Ah.

"Um… me?" Night asked.

"No, the other lookout I'm spending an irresponsible amount of time with," Sky snarked.

"I'm, uh…" Night looked down at her chest. "Blue."

A pause.

"Thanks for that."

"I'm… kinda small," she admitted. "Just all over small. I used to get teased for it."

Sky waited a moment before a quick and strained. "Go on."

"More?"

"Tell me about your face."

"My face?"

Sky sighed, long and dramatic. "Relationships are a give and take, Night."

"I've just… never really noticed the shape of my face before."

"Well, me neither!"

"But I—you're the one who's good with words!" Night argued.

A pause.

"You have a round face, I bet," Sky said. Her voice had softened a bit at the edges, no longer quite as exasperated as she'd been pretending. "Not round like a kid, though. Bone-structure round. With big eyes. And low ears."

Night found herself feeling her own face with her hoof, very gently, checking Sky's guesses for accuracy.

"You probably have a perfect snout—not one that goes up at the end like mine," she continued.

Night's hoof ran down the bridge of her snout, lingering in the perfectly square angle it made with the bridge.

"A strong neck," Sky added. "Not a delicate one. But a nice one."

Her hoof traveled along her jawline and to the cord of muscle which ran down the side of her neck.

She swallowed softly. She felt the way her neck moved with the action.

"Oh, and your mane," Sky said. "Done up tall, right? With big waves?"

Night's hoof hesitated.

The woods hummed with crickets.

The spell was broken.

The blood rushed to Night's cheeks in an instant.

She clicked on the radio and forced a laugh. "Uh-huh," she mumed, trying to muster even an ounce of enthusiasm. "You got me."

A long quiet.

"Do you need help getting back to the tower?" Sky asked.

Her voice was limp, too.

Night cleared her throat. "Maybe."

"Can you find your way back to a path?"

Night stepped away from the tree and rubbed the sore spot on her shoulder where she had been leaning against it. The rough texture of the bark had imprinted there on her fur and her skin, leaving a strange pattern of swoops and swirls which she tried to smooth back into position.

It was then, as she stood trying to wipe away the woods, that she saw it,

It was hard to tell what it was at first, owing both to the darkness which surrounded her and to the crudeness of the shape that had been carved into the wood. One half of it was comprised of deep, scooping gashes, while the other looked more like mouthwritten chicken scratch—but, together, they formed a clear image:

A heart.

The longer Night stared at it, the more clearly she could see it. Not only the carving, but the action; two lovers, crowded together. The sound of a switchblade opening. The rough chipping away of the bark. The tangling of limbs and tails and wings…

Territory claimed.

“Night?” Sky’s voice pierced through the daydream. “You there?”

Night shook herself out of her daze and fumbled with the button on the radio. “Y-yeah. Sky, you’re never gonna believe what I’m looking at right now.” She said it so breathlessly, a smile in her voice, even if it wasn’t quite on her lips.

Sky was quiet. “Um… what?”

“They were real, Sky,” Night said, running her hoof over the rough carving one more time. “The voices. They were real.”

Chronology became very important to the mares in the woods.

July slipped quickly away as Clear Sky and Night Glider tried to create a timeline from their notes—with occasional help from Star Hunter. It was barebones, sure, but a story began to form across the walls of the lookout tower. A love story.

Two creatures. Very different in as many respects as one could imagine.

One was a griffin. The other seemed to be some sort of pony.

The griffin was tough. A bit rude, all said. Thorny. Difficult to reach in many ways—she was a creature of few words, and seemed to drape most of her communication in joking and sarcasm. Catching one of her more vulnerable moments was rare.

The pony, a stallion, was the opposite. Honest and open to an extent that made even Clear Sky roll her eyes and sigh. He was always hunting for affection and approval from the other—asking whether she still loved, whether she thought him handsome, or funny, or skilled. Clingy.

It was difficult to imagine how they'd found each other. They seemed to be of two worlds in every respect, and yet completely convinced that they belonged together.

Despite what the other creatures in their lives seemed to believe. Hence the woods.

Their love story, however, was far from the only topic of conversation Night and Sky regularly returned to.

“Do you believe in time travel?” Sky asked.

Night snorted. “I never really thought of it as a belief,” she admitted. “It’s… well, there’s limits, right? Just like any other magic.”

Sky hummed thoughtfully into the radio. Her breath came through the speaker as warm static.

“Plus, this isn’t… time travel time travel,” Night continued. “It’s something else.”

“Ghosts?”

“It’s not ghosts.”

“Wow. Awfully sure about that, arencha?” Sky said, a note of teasing in her voice.

Night grumbled something wordless to herself and rolled onto her back. “It’s just… I dunno. There’s rules, y’know?” she said.

Sky was quiet for a moment. “Ghost rules?”

“Like, life rules!” Night specified. “Science and magic rules! And ponies a lot smarter than me have spent… I dunno, a lot of years figuring all the rules out. I feel like the odds of us managing to break the rules are pretty low.”

Sky grunted softly. Her sheets rustled.

Night pictured Sky pushing herself up into a sitting position, tossing her curls over her shoulder, and lifting a didactic hoof in preparation for the coming lecture. She was picturing Sky a lot these days—especially as they spoke later and later into the night.

“You know, I always thought the park was a little off,” Sky said.

Night furrowed her brows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just… it’s weird out here,” Sky murmured. She shifted again, and Night imagined she was pulling her blankets around her into a cape. “I can usually convince myself that it’s just the isolation, but… I don't know. Sometimes it feels like more than that.”

“Hm.” Night nodded, mostly to herself, but partly so that Sky would hear the quiet rushing of her mane against the pillow. So that maybe Sky would try to imagine her, too. “Like… more how?”

Sky sighed, tense and a bit frustrated, though not with Night. “It’s just a feeling. Like deja vu, I guess. Or like… you know when you open a drawer and forget what you were looking for? Or walk into a room and forget why you were there in the first place?”

“Mhm.”

“It’s like that,” she said. “Like there’s something right on the tip of my tongue that I’m forgetting. Or—actually, you know what it’s like? It’s like when you wear a hat all day, and you take off the hat when you get home but it still feels like you’re wearing it.”

“Like a… phantom limb?” Night prompted.

Sky snickered. “A phantom hat,” she corrected, that comforting edge of humor lifting her words again.

Night laughed with her. The sound drifted out the window of the lookout tower and into the night air.

After a moment, Sky sighed again, that warm static once again blooming against Night’s chest. “It’s just a nagging feeling that I’m… missing something. Or I’ve forgotten something,” she said softly. “And I feel like I can sense it on other ponies, too. I know Star Hunter wasn’t all there—at least, not after a few months. And now these voices…”

Night waited a moment, but Sky only breathed deep and slow. “What about them?”

Sky made a small sound of discomfort. “Willful ignorance, I think,” she said. “They came here to forget."

She went quiet, though her hoof remained steadfastly on the button. Night swore she could hear the clicking of the forecasting instruments over the radio.

“You don’t think that’s…” Night paused, fighting to get the word to the tip of her tongue. “Kinda romantic?”

A long silence.

“Forgetting?” Sky repeated, emotion untraceable.

Night fumbled with the hem of the sheet she’d wrapped herself in. “N-no. Not exactly,” she replied at last. “Just, like… not caring.”

Another long pause.

Night held her tongue. She couldn’t put a hoof on why, but it felt like a forbidden line of questioning. The sort of thing which forever remains unspoken—at least between her and Clear Sky.

“Yeah,” Sky said. Almost flippantly. “It’s romantic. But it isn’t love.”

She would know, Night thought.

She wasn’t sure why she thought that.

The radio sat quietly on her chest, bobbing with the gentle rise and fall of her breath as she tried to think of what to say. Or even just how to say it. The time to reply passed quickly, and still she sat. Frozen.

She swore she felt the tower sway.

"Do you think you could force yourself to forget something?" Sky asked, her voice soft and fuzzy and tickling Night’s ears.

Night shuddered at the feeling. "I dunno."

"Well, do you think magic can make you forget?"

Night opened her mouth to reply, but found that no words came to her. She made a small sound, sighed and let the radio fall to her chest.

"You would know better than me," Night said.

"Why's that?"

"You're a unicorn."

Sky chuckled softly.

Night breathed a light and private sigh of relief.

"That's not really how it works,” Sky murmured.

"Well, I dunno," Night said. She allowed a tiny smile to creep across her face. "You seem pretty smart to me."

Sky did not reply.

Night imagine that she was smiling to herself, caught in a moment of awe and flattery, concerned that it would show in her voice.

There is something to be said for sitting in silence with a friend. Night often found herself wondering if these moments, when the radios were off and yet still clutched in matching hooves, counted.

She figured they probably didn't.

Still, Night Glider had the strangest feeling that, even when the radios were off, Clear Sky was there with her. Perhaps it was a result of the isolation, perhaps the little investigation they had concocted, or perhaps it was merely Night Glider’s wishful thinking.

Truthfully, it was probably something to do with how Clear Sky was constantly on Night’s mind, whether or not they happened to be speaking.

And how could she not? To Night, Sky was as great a mystery as the other voices on her radio.

"Hey, Sky?" Night's voice squeaked on the end of her name.

A moment, then: "yes?"

"Um. You always talk about how ponies come out here to… get away from stuff," Night murmured. She pawed gently at the cot beneath her with a single rear hoof, hoping to fill the silence with the rustling of the sheets.

Sky laughed once, short and dry. “Do I?”

Night laughed along. “Once or twice.”

“It’s just one of those jobs,” Sky said. “There are plenty of perfectly innocent things to get away from.”

“Yeah,” Night agreed.

Another silence fell.

This one was not quite so warm.

“Hey, Sky?”

“Yes?”

“I-I have stuff," Night said softly.

Another silence consumed them.

This one was not warm.

Night Glider held still under her sheets. She wondered what sorts of things must be running through Sky's mind, what things she might assume Night Glider to be running from.

She wondered if any of them were quite awful enough that she should just admit the small, pathetic truth of it.

"Um." Sky held down the button despite her silence. "I mean… I guess I knew that."

"Whatever it is you're trying to get away from…"

"I…" Sky cleared her throat. "I have stuff, too."

A different silence.

A silence in the other direction.

Night Glider hadn't known that silences were directional. She also hadn't even entertained the idea of Clear Sky being at all… messed up.

She tried not to think about all the things it might be. But things crept in.

"I don't think we should talk about it," Sky said.

Night's lips pressed together into a thin line as she tried to think of a response.

"We're here to get away," Sky said. "I think talking about it would defeat the purpose."

There was some sense in that.

Night clenched and unclenched her jaw. "Hm."

Sky cleared her throat. "Th-thank you," she said. "For… not asking."

Night forced a smile. "Sure," she said. "Not my business, anyway."

"And yours isn't mine."

The radio static lingered, as if she intended to say more, only to click off and leave Night Glider in silence once again.

The wind whistled in the trees.

The crickets chirped, fast and high.

A feeling of profound isolation, bone-deep loneliness, crept over Night Glider as she drifted into fitful sleep.

Interlude III

Clear Sky could feel it coming.

There was a certain threshold. A point beyond which even the air itself was so dry that it seemed to thin. Each breath became a slow sanding of the insides. Each gust of wind mother nature's rasp, begging for rain and reprieve from the sun.

It was as Sky savored another mouthful of precious cold water that she saw the other warning signs cross her instruments. The prickling feeling, accompanied by the growing wind speed, the rising temperatures… all of it practically glowing in the early morning light.

Sky wiped away the stray droplets of water which dotted her chin and peered down to scrutinize her array of instruments more closely. She withdrew a pencil and began to scribble away in her notebook, shielding dials and glass cases from the harshly angled sun as she went.

Though the notes would likely mean very little even to another in her field, the patterns which formed in Sky's logbook were plain as her name.

Wildfire conditions.

It wouldn't take much. A stray spark or ember landing on just the right bit of tinder—tinder which blanketed the ground of the entire park—could mean an out-of-control fire that would be incredibly difficult to contain.

Sky took a breath to steady herself. All told, it was nothing the park didn't expect.

But still. She prickled.

Sky reached for the radio.

AUGUST

The summer ends, as any day does, in a long, orange afternoon.

August is a time of constant closing and ending. It is a time when, no matter how old you are, you can feel the end of freedom rushing towards you like a freight train. Or perhaps it was the feeling of being shackled to a hard place with a rock on the horizon.

Night Glider had been feeling more shackled than usual of late. Between her tension with Clear Sky, the unremitting voices of long-lost lovers on her radio, and the promise of a return to real life in just two short months, she couldn't decide whether she needed the summer to go on twice as long as usual or just stop in its tracks right here.

She stared out at the woods as she retrieved a weak breakfast of a half-eaten protein bar from underneath her cot, as if expecting them to vanish should she dare blink.

The woods, however, stayed right where they were.

Night rubbed her eyes and took another bite of her stale protein bar.

She knew that watching for wildfires was technically the only thing in her job description (she had been promised the occasional chance to scold a negligent camper, though this opportunity had not yet arisen). Yet, somehow, she felt that leaving the voices an unsolved mystery would be abandoning her post.

Is this what magic did to you?

It made you… liable?

"Hey, Night? You up yet?"

Night was torn from her listless staring by the sound of Clear Sky on the radio. She sighed and grabbed hers out of its cradle. "Yeah. What's up?"

Sky, in her awkward stiffness borne of an admissionless admission, hesitated a moment. "I just wanted to let you know that, um… it's looking like wildfire conditions out there," she said. "So. Be careful."

Night Glider did not look at the radio. "Copy."

Clear Sky did not attempt a reply.

The voices had been silent these past few days. Night had tried not to read into that, but it was nigh impossible not to—how else was she meant to respond? First Sky wouldn't talk, now even the voices had decided to shut up?

Fat chance. Terrible timing on their part; their story was just getting interesting.

Night rubbed the sleep from her eyes and turned to her notebook. It was a messy thing, scribbled all over in the smallest writing she could manage, but it still had one great advantage over Star Hunter's snarl of papers: it was still in chronological order.

The book was still open to the previous encounter's notes, dated a little over a week ago:

Tybalt Trail, NW point

M: —acting ridiculous. No way this is safe

S: You don't trust me

M: I don't trust this thing

S: But you don't trust me either. I know it

M: [??] —taking things personally. I'm not talking about YOU I'm talking about—

S: I know you're not normally a trusting creature, but I thought that—

M: Why would you say that?

[long pause]

M: Seriously. Why would you say that?

[long pause]

S: I'll fix the lean-to. Sorry.

Night frowned, overcome by deja vu, and flipped back a few pages. Though not precisely the same words, the same spirit of vitriolic and deep-biting argument could be found in many prior entries.

Their arguments were some of the harder things to really understand. Even just catching snippets of their conversations about each other, or about what their lives had been like before coming to the park, most missing pieces fell into place.

The arguments, however, seemed to run deeper than that. So few words truly exchanged. Quick, heated back-and-forth which communicated an intimacy gone sour, an ability to complete each other's sentences that was twisted into a method of constantly shouting over one another.

It spoke to a much richer life outside of the woods. One that only occasionally managed to seep into the park's actual boundaries, infecting them quickly and completely.

Night sighed, turned to a fresh page, and dated it. She closed her eyes and silently wished that today would turn up more than another blank page.

She had other wishes in mind, but she chose not to give voice to them. Not even in her head.

And, with that, Night Glider was off to work.

The woods were… perhaps not arid, but certainly a new sort of heat. Night had thought naively that, by now, she had felt them all, but August brought a strange feeling to the air. She swore she could see it as she trotted the familiar paths: a tint of orange-yellow that had baked itself into every surface.

Night considered radioing Sky to ask about the weather. She loved to talk about the weather—one of few living ponies for whom that sort of excitement was truly genuine.

But, despite the unfamiliar feeling of the radio bouncing against her hip, Night chose to leave it.

Sky came here to forget. Night was becoming a reminder.

It started with a feeling.

Night Glider was accustomed to dryness and heat. She had spent some formative time living in the desert, after all, and still considered it her home. She knew well the way the sun would bake her back, the tingling of an oncoming sunburn, the ache in her throat simply from breathing.

She knew what danger felt like, too. Long ago, she had learned to feel it instinctually. Even the slightest thing out of place, the tiniest ripple in the air, would send a shot of adrenaline through her core.

This was different, though. A different sort of heat. A different sort of feeling.

More than any one creature in danger. This feeling bubbled up from the ground itself.

Heat.

A wave of heat.

Not down, but sideways. Rolling along the forest floor like lava, like fog. Not like the sun at all.

Night Glider felt her wings begin to itch. At times, the itch in her wings had been so powerful as to wake her from a sound sleep, tangled up in blankets, spasming frantically to get away.

The heat baked her cheek.

Her wings shuddered.

She held them firm with all her might.

A sound.

A sound like the trees. But not the trees. Not leaves rustling. Not static humming. But so similar, she couldn't think of the word.

A smell, too. Sharp and strong. Bitter, almost. Her throat ached. A word for this, too, but she couldn't find it.

And a bigger word.

A word for it all.

The word eluded her. The word she knew she had to say. She needed to pull the radio off her hip and say that word into it, as quickly as she could.

"Do you smell something?"

A familiar voice from her hip. Nameless and masculine.

A scoff. "It's probably you."

"I'm perfectly clean," he snapped. "It's you who—"

"Would it kill you to bathe? I know we're in the woods and all but—"

"Ponies are not dirtier than griffins! That's such a—"

"Wait a minute."

"—such a stereotype, and I can't believe—"

"Shut it."

They were quiet.

She sniffed. "Smells like… smoke."

Smoke.

Crackle.

Fire.

Night Glider murmured something wordless as her hoof flew to the radio at her hip.

Adrenaline does funny things. Those who know well that icy feeling often come to trust it as a guiding force, something they can surrender to entirely in the face of fear. It brought a calm to the mind, a sort of transcendental blankness, even as the body fought for survival.

Night Glider had been one such pony. Her time in search and rescue had taught her to allow autopilot to consume her. For her, the blankness was part adrenaline, and part talent—something innate to her since her earliest memories.

And yet, as Night began to feel that wave of heat bearing down upon her, she found herself frozen.

Her hoof on the radio.

The distant crackle of the flames.

The smell of smoke, her lungs fighting against it.

The adrenaline pooled within her. Nowhere to go. No action to take. Only growing. Burning.

Burning.

Stuck.

Radio.

Night managed to unhook the radio from her saddlebags and hold it to her face. She pressed it against her cheek, even the plastic warmer than it should have been, the vents of the speaker tickling her fur.

“Fire,” she said. Quietly. “Sky, fire.”

A pause.

The longest pause there had ever been between them.

"Where?" Sky asked. "And how sure are you?"

Night's voice trembled. "I-I don't know. Very sure."

"Stay calm. What window are you looking out of?"

Night swallowed hard. "I'm in the woods."

Another pause.

The heat rose.

"Night?"

"Yes?"

"I need you to listen very carefully."

"Okay."

"You need to get above the canopy."

Night's wings shook. Beyond a tremble. Something violent. Something fighting to take over. "I can't."

"What?"

"I-I can't, I just can't." Her voice, despite the shaking which had taken over her body, remained remarkably even. "I'm going to run."

"Night, listen to me! You need to get away from the smoke, or you're going to—"

But Sky's voice faded beneath the pounding of hooves and the ever-increasing sound of crackling flame.

It was easy to run.

That feeling of weightlessness came over Night, a total release that allowed her to be carried upon the pools and rivers of hot air which blew over and through her. She hooves beat the ground. Her head bobbed with every stride. Her heart and lungs pumped with all their might.

The crackle grew to a roar.

At first, Night thought the tiny pricks she felt on her face and back might have been raindrops. A fleeting feeling, fading before it even registered.

Rain would have been lovely.

But the prick caught the soft inner surface of her ear, and it burned terribly before crumbling away.

Embers.

Not bigger than fat snowflakes, blowing across the path. Their heat so intense it could be mistaken for cold.

Like freezing rain.

Like hail.

Needles of surprising pain which pierced her skin.

Just like—

"Small rockslide to the northeast. Can we get a scout to rope it off?"

Night Glider squeezed her eyes shut against the memory.

"I'll do it," she said. "Time me."

It had been raining that night.

Freezing daggers.

Night Glider growled to herself.

Her wings convulsed against her sides.

"You sure you're up for this?"

"To rope off a trail? Yeah, I think I can handle it."

"But the weather—"

"Screw the weather."

Screw the weather.

Famous last words.

The conditions were fine, but Night Glider was not.

Hadn't been in a long time.

Hooves met stone, breaking her out of the memory.

Night Glider followed the feeling and the sound of the stone beneath her, despite the tunnel which closed in on her vision.

Stone didn't burn.

Stone was safe.

Safer, at least.

She could already feel the heat letting up. The wildfire fading behind her as she finally got ahead of it, carried by the frantic thumping of her heart as opposed to the fire's limited sources of fuel.

As she did, the sound of her radio slowly returned to her ears.

"Night Glider, come in!"

"—move! Get above the canopy!"

"My wings! My feathers!"

"Night Glider, please come in!"

"Go without me, babygirl!"

"I'm not leaving you!"

"Night Glider!"

An endless chorus of anguished and panicked shouting. Some voices from now, some from an unspecified past.

Night did not pause to retrieve her radio. The shouting carried her forward.

Hooves on stone. Wings flared, pumping hard and wild to keep her tiny frame from tumbling over. Embers nipping her heels like a sheepdog. Heart hammering. Lungs fighting.

And then, like a miracle, Night Glider stumbled forward, up the stones, slamming to the floor of a tiny alcove.

Her wind was forced from her chest. For a long moment, Night found that she could not breathe, blink, or move. The adrenaline shot, at last, into her mind, and the word finally came to her:

Wildfire.

She gasped.

The air still smelled of smoke, but the scent of cool, musty stone was just as strong.

“Night Glider, pick up!” Sky’s frantic voice echoed through the alcove.

Autopilot. Night’s hoof flew to her hip. “I’m here.”

A long pause.

Not a laughing pause. Not a thinking pause. A catch-your-breath pause.

“Thank Celestia,” Sky huffed, her own voice strained with heavy breathing. “Where in the name of the sisters are you?! I need to report this, and you need to get out of there!”

Night sucked in a deep breath and turned to look back out at the forest.

It wasn’t as spectacular as she thought it would be. Very little of the woods actually roared with bright orange and red flames—rather, a magnificent black plume of smoke rose into the sky, a sinister glow of fire lurking in its heart.

Not nearly as far below her as she thought.

She looked to her left and right. She spotted the tiny speck of her tower on the horizon.

“I’m, uh… I’m on the ridge,” Night managed to gasp.

“I think I’m seeing the smoke now. Southeast of your tower, right?”

Night did her best to orient herself. “Sounds right.”

“And where are you?”

“Close,” Night said, before breaking into a small fit of coughing. “I’m in a… I dunno, a little cave or something on the side of the mountain.”

“How close?”

Night looked out at the fire. “Close enough. It’s hot in here.”

Sky swore softly under her breath. “Sit tight, okay?”

The radio cut out.

Night clenched her teeth. She sat down hard on the stone, looking out at the smoke as it spiraled into the sky.

“—going to get out of here,” her radio muttered. “I can’t believe I was this stupid!”

“D-don’t talk like that,” the stallion’s voice stuttered. “We’re gonna be—”

“Don’t!” the griffin snapped back. “You talked me into this! You talked me into living in wildfire country because of some idiot fairytale!”

A silence.

“This was never gonna work.”

“What?” the stallion replied. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Us,” the griffin replied. “We have issues!”

“Society has the issue!” the stallion replied. “That’s why we came out here, remember?”

“The interspecies thing is not what I’m talking about!” the griffin roared.

The sound echoed through the alcove.

Night felt her spine prickle.

“You have problems,” the griffin went on. “I have problems! And the problems don’t go away just because we decide to ignore them!”

“But that’s the point!” the stallion argued. “We’re choosing, babygirl! We’re choosing to forget about it!”

“We chose to ignore everything! We blundered out into a wildfire!”

The stallion did not reply.

“And now we’re gonna die. Because we couldn’t just break up already.”

The quiet lingered a moment longer. Just static hissing in the back of the cave. Then, with a click, the voices of the lovers went quiet for the last time.

Night clutched the radio close to her chest. It was a familiar feeling, now—a strange comfort in the face of the rising heat.

And the heat did rise.

The fire, while not entirely out of control just yet, was spreading.

She could see it now. The flames growing. Moving like a herd, a flock of birds, natural in a way that was still entirely foreign and eerie and wrong.

Reaching the mouth of the cave.

Sealing her in.

The heat began to feel like an oven.

Like the wave that hits you, unexpectedly, as you open the door. A sudden and strange brand of pain, a sickly dark surprise in a moment of complete innocence.

“I’m sorry,” the stallion said.

Night clutched the radio clever tighter.

“You need more than I can give you, okay?” the griffon replied.

“I-I know…”

“And… I’m sorry. That I can’t,” she added. “And that I acted like I could.”

A silence.

Crackling.

Crackling flame.

Crackling static.

It tingled.

“So?” the griffon prompted.

“What?”

“Your turn,” she said darkly. “Say your thing. Die with some dignity.”

Quiet.

Tingle.

“Or don’t. I don’t care.”

“I never got you,” he said. Quickly. Softly. “I think I just… liked that you liked me. And I was scared to lose it.”

Quiet.

Crackle.

Tingle.

“Well.” The griffon grunted. “There ya go.”

The radio clicked off.

Night felt it. Right then, for the first time.

The phantom.

It wasn’t quite like Sky had described. It wasn’t something she’d forgotten. Not a thought hanging out in space, waiting to be caught when you turned to leave the room.

This was something else. A thought without form. Without words. A simple, complete, concrete idea that she couldn’t ever hope to describe.

It made her feel very heavy. Not at all the renewing lightness she had anticipated when all the pieces, at long last, came together. It made the room feel much smaller, but the fire so much further away.

A small feeling.

A dark feeling.

A cold, close, isolating feeling.

She pulled the radio away from her chest, feeling keenly the impression it left in her clammy skin as she did.

Slowly, carefully, she held it to her lips.

“Sky?”

“They’re coming, Night. Just hold on, okay?”

“A while back, someone took my cutie mark,” Night said, an overwhelming calm in her words.

Sky stuttered. “What? What are you talking about?”

“I took it back,” she continued. “I mean… it’s there. But I don’t think it’s really back yet. Y’know?”

“I need you to keep your head above the smoke and stay with me, Night,” Sky ordered.

Her words tight.

Trying to ignore.

Trying to forget.

“That first time I really tried to use it again, I just… broke.” Night chewed thoughtfully on the inside of her cheek, watching the flames roll through the woods beyond her hollow. “All that stuff I thought made me me was gone. Like my brain still had it locked up, even though the mark was back on my flank.”

She lifted one wing and looked back at her cutie mark.

It still felt wrong.

Like it was someone else’s.

Like she didn’t deserve it anymore.

“Anyway. That’s what I came here to forget,” Night said. “Someone took my wings away from me, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get them back.”

Silence.

Night tried to imagine that she was still there.

But maybe she wasn’t.

Whether or not she had heard, though, the heaviness lifted from Night’s chest. SHe closed her eyes and felt a wave of calm come over her, relaxing her every joint and muscle, as she fell against the wall of the cave.

“I just wanted you to know,” she muttered. “Just in case.”

The smoke was creeping in, now.

Thick and gray. Almost like fog, but for its sharpness. A bladelike feeling which caused Night’s lungs to ache terribly.

“Your turn,” she added in a quick rasp. “Tell me your thing.”

A silence.

Night shimmied against the stone.

She tried to imagine what Sky’s secret might be—a rabbithole into which she had forbid herself entry—but came up empty. Whether that was from the smoke or from the near perfect picture of Sky she held so carefully in her mind, Night wasn’t sure.

And then:

“My daughter,” Sky said.

So small.

So meek.

Night sucked in a hoarse breath. “I knew you had a daughter,” she said. “The mare at reception told me.”

“Not that I have one,” she said, very nearly laughing. A joke she longed to share, even now. “That I… I can’t see her right now,” she explained, tears choking her voice.

“Oh,” Night said.

She wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

“It’s—she just looks so much like her father, and he’s—” she caught herself. “I hate myself for it.”

The flames grew.

Climbed higher.

Roared louder.

“I just hate myself,” she repeated. “And I want to forget it all. And sometimes I almost can, and then I hate myself so much more.”

Night reached up to rub her eye, though it hardly chased away the sting of the smoke. “I don’t hate you,” she said.

A cough snuck out.

“Night?” Sky called, desperation quickly taking hold. “Keep your head above the smoke! Don’t breathe it!”

Night coughed again.

Small.

Meek.

Her hoof, quickly losing strength, quivered against the button on the radio.

“I don’t hate you, Sky,” she murmured.

Her tongue heavy.

Her eyes stinging.

Tears rolling down her cheeks, though she could hardly feel them.

The radio, at last, slipped from her hoof and tumbled to the floor of the cave.

“I don’t hate you at all.”

Interlude IV

There was a long moment where Sky felt she could not breathe.

Not that she couldn’t sense she needed it. Her lungs practically burned with the lack of it. She simply couldn’t force herself to actually take a breath. Not to move. Not to speak. Not even to blink.

A complete terror. A fear that left her so completely frozen, so deeply parlyzed, that she could hardly even think.

She dropped the radio.

It thudded against the wood floor. A piece of its case pinged off in a different direction, clattering hollow and useless and fragile in the tiny room.

The sound of it is what shocked her.

She gasped. Long and deep. Her lungs filled once again, and she scrambled for the microphone on her desk, every sound now loud and sharp as a pitchfork in her ears.

“Has anyone found the lookout?” she asked, breathless and desperate. “She’s passed out due to smoke inhalation. I’ve lost touch completely.”

A pause.

A long pause.

“On approach.”

On approach.

So dismissive. Such a crumb of a response.

Sky batted the microphone away from her mouth and leaned across her desk, half-climbing, not caring about the instruments she trampled on the way. She squinted up at the bright August noon and watched for any glimpse of the incoming rescue team.

“Smoke’s pretty thick,” the speaker on her desk informed her. “You got any more location details?”

Sky growled to herself.

Isn’t this what they were trained to do? Find ponies in smoke?

She figured not everyone was Night Glider.

Then she figured that, since not everyone was Night Glider, she could at least try to even the playing field.

For the first time since her arrival in Smokey Mountain National Park, Sky turned from her desk and galloped out the beat-up screen door.

Her tower had a wraparound porch, and she circled it quickly, nearly skidding out as she came around each of two corners. But, soon enough, she stood on the corner facing the billowing smoke.

She could see, now, the tiny specks of distant search-and-rescue pegasi. They circled the area, darting in and out of the smoke, searching for a needle in a haystack.

Not all pegasi knew how to work the winds. It was a science and a skill taught only to those who sought it out. Only to those who needed it. The search-and-rescue team, though skilled, was more adept at diving in and out of difficult situations than they were at manipulating them. Sky watched as they tried to feebly reshape the smoke, though it seemed to slip right through their hooves every time.

Sky clenched her jaw.

She closed her eyes.

Her late husband’s face was there. It was every time she closed her eyes, but it was now twice as sharp.

She reached out, beyond the confines of her tower, and into the sky with a silly thread of magic. It twisted, glided, multiplied—growing bigger and stronger, weaving itself into a web, a fabric, a net that could catch and hold and pull away the cloud of smoke.

She felt it.

Different than a cloud.

A cloud was cool and soft, willing to be shaped, happy to be touched.

This was quite the opposite.

But Sky fought it.

She braced herself against the rail, tugging with all of her might, dragging this ephemeral thing away from the mountain. It bucked against her, but she held it firm.

Firm enough, at least.

Not quite clear skies, but the voice came through nonetheless:

“We’ve got her.”

SEPTEMBER

Dirt and pine needles crunched softly under Night Glider’s hooves as she trotted through the forest, trailmarkers long behind her. Her breath, though wheezing gently, kept a steady pace with her strides.

The air here was invigorating. Crisp and sharp with the memory of smoke and flame, but still welcome. Still bright.

Or maybe it was the lightness of her chest that made it all feel so much better.

Being here as a tourist was different than being here as a lookout. There were plenty of other things that were different, of course, but Night Glider noted the distinct lack of ownership she had for this place now. Before, she had felt a sort of possession—or, at the very least, overwhelming responsibility. A formless anxiety which joined her other formless anxieties in a dark cloud, always hanging over her head.

But the sky was slowly clearing.

Now, she only felt the coolness of the coming fall.

She slowed, coming to a stop at the crest of the next hill. She reached back with the intent to fumble about in her saddlebags, but found her eyes locked on the scene before her: the edge of the fire's wrath.

The forest was damaged. There was no denying that. But the damage was harder to see than one would think.

The greenery was largely gone, but it had been so high in the first place that it made little difference to everything at eye-level. The resulting bareness of the trees let more sunlight reach the forest floor than ever could have before, even in the dead of winter, and so brought a tremendous lightness to the place.

In the day, at least.

Night Glider, however, preferred the dark—always had, always would. The sun was slipping down beneath the horizon as she looked out on the skeleton of the woods she'd spent her summer watching, and she honestly thought they looked much the same as they had five months previous.

But looking wasn't the same as being. Night Glider knew this all too well.

She nodded to the damaged part of the woods, acknowledging it without needing to submit to it, and returned to fumble with her saddlebags once more.

After a moment of pawing through discarded granola bags and travel-sized tubes of various ointments and salves, Night's hoof closed around the letter. She pulled it out, smoothed it carefully against a nearby boulder, and read it once more:

Dear Night Glider,

I hope this isn't too weird, but it's been a few days since you were replaced as lookout and I'm going out of my mind with worry. Maybe it's the mom in me.

I truly wish I was better at letter-writing (it seems like a neat thing to be good at), but this is probably the hardest thing I've had to do since… maybe childbirth. And, even though I’m trying to write something to my daughter every day, I honestly don’t think I’ve gotten any better at it.

Just kidding.

But not really.

The tail end of the summer is barely dragging by without you here. I feel like we lost four whole months in the blink of an eye, and yet September has lasted about six years all on its own. If you get this letter, I would really, really appreciate a letter in return—maybe a visit, too?

Just kidding.

But not really.

I tucked a spare radio under the big boulder near the heart-shaped carving (I've also included a map because I know how twisty it can get back there). If you can, come back and give me a call. I just want to know you're okay.

With love,

Clear Sky

With love.

Night held the letter to her chest for a moment. If there was one thing she missed, it was that tiny vibration of the radio as it sat there, almost purring, while Sky talked with her into the night.

The letter did not physically purr in the same way, but Night swore she could feel something when she held it against her heart.

On the back of the letter was a hoof-drawn map, though Night had perhaps overestimated its usefulness; Sky had neglected including any landmarks, however small, and instead drew a crude approximation of the trails in pencil. Somewhere off in the white void was an x, also labeled 'here ish?' in a hasty scribble.

Night tucked the letter away in her saddlebag. Muscle memory would have to do.

She took off at a light canter, allowing the familiarity of the well-worn path to guide her. The lovers had settled for quite a while in this part of the woods, and so it was a frequent stop for listening in on those forgotten conversations.

Night found herself hoping, once again, that their voices would disrupt her travel (despite her distinct lack of radio). It, too, was a familiar feeling. It reminded Night of the way she had spent snowy mornings listening hard for the radio to call a snow day.

Her private hopes were interrupted by the flash of a familiar orange arrow—the one she had painted earlier this summer.

It was already starting to fade.

It was obvious why, of course. The fire had taken its shelter away, and it was now exposed to the elements. Rain and sun and all manner of other things.

The responsibility reared up, and Night found herself wishing she had a can of spray paint on her.

Not your job anymore, she reminded herself.

She knelt down in the dirt and reached under the boulder with one hoof. The underside of the rock was cold and clammy, like a turtle's belly, and the plastic casing of the radio stood out to her instantly.

She pulled it out.

Same old yellow.

Before she could even think of what she wanted to say, she had pressed the button, and stuttered out a meek "h-hey!"

She released the button and smacked herself on the forehead with the tiny radio.

Stupid.

A long silence.

She smacked her head again, just for good measure.

Then—

"Night!"

It made her jump.

Then it made her smile.

And, before she knew it, she was laughing.

"Is that really you?!" Sky shouted. "Ever since I sent that letter I've just been waiting and—I kept the lines clear especially for you! I didn't want even the tiniest chance that I'd miss even one word!"

She held the button, trying to conjure more, but seemed completely overtaken by her excitement.

Night cleared her throat. "Yeah, it's me," she replied, a little hint of laughter sneaking through.

"It's you!" Sky replied. "I knew it! I knew you'd come back! I have to—hold on!"

The line went dead.

Night chuckled to herself, then sat down against the boulder and waited patiently for Sky to pick back up. She tried to imagine what she might be doing, but came up empty.

Her voice cut through a moment later:

"Tell me everything!"

Along with quite a bit of clattering.

Night said down a bit lower. "Uh. Everything, huh?"

No response.

Playing games.

"Well… I dunno, I don't remember a ton," she said. "From the fire. The doctors told me I'd inhaled a lot of smoke and conked out, so… go figure, I guess."

She paused, waiting for a comment.

None came.

"They took me to a hospital nearby and, um… well, the doctors were trying to figure out why I hadn't flown out. I guess they thought I'd hurt something," she explained. "It's kind of a haze, but they managed to drag it all out of me. Wasn't pretty. But I'm doing some physical therapy and… and therapy therapy. Which is new for me."

She allowed herself to slide all the way off the boulder and onto the ground, sprawled out on her back.

"I haven't been going super long, but I'm pretty sure it's helping," she said. "Still haven't done any flying yet. I'll get there, though."

Night placed the radio on her chest and released the button, waiting for more from Sky.

"I'm really proud of you," she said with a bit of effort. "Sorry. Out of breath."

Night arched a brow. "Why the hay are you out of breath you weirdo?"

"Just keep going!" Sky instructed, her voice bright. "I'm listening!"

Night sighed, a bit in confusion and a bit from the familiar comfort of said confusion. "I dunno what to say. It's only been a month, Sky," she said. "I haven't done much."

She dug one hoof in her ear after a sudden itch.

"Oh! I read that book!" Night suddenly remembered. "The one you recommended—the mystery!"

A pause.

"Passion of a Heist?!" Sky shouted. "You read it? Did you love it?!"

Night guffawed. "Clearly not as much as you," she said. "But… yeah. It kept me company while I was in the hospital. Almost like you were still there with me, y'know?"

It just sort of slipped out.

As soon as it was out, Night wanted desperately to shove it back in. She bit down hard on her lip and smacked the radio against her forehead again, as if she could knock the regret out of her brain.

Stupid.

Stupid.

And then there was a sound.

A sort of a pop. The perfect sound of a cork flying from the mouth of a champagne bottle, followed by a much more literal sparkling than that of the bubbly carbonation.

She felt it, too. A twisting of the air. A pressure drop.

A teleportation.

The sounds of the forest rushed in afterwards, filling a silence that Night hadn’t even noticed.

“It kept you company?”

It’s hard to describe what it’s like to get to know someone exclusively via radio waves. Their voice is carried in soft, fuzzy lilts, the kind that makes hairs stand on end. Everything between the button presses a complete and total mystery.

To know someone that way, and then to hear their voice so clearly…

To hear the way the warmth was still there, buried in the throatiness of her words. To hear the way air rushed out of her nose in surprise.

It was like suddenly seeing the world in color.

Night Glider shot up, still clutching the radio to her chest with a fervor she couldn’t logically explain, and was met with another explosion of life in color.

Clear Sky was, in a word, beautiful.

Beautiful in a gentle way. A subtle, simple way. A grounded way.

She wasn’t tall. Night had pictured her tall, but she was really only an inch or two taller than the pegasus. Her mane hung in a thick, puffy curtain beside her face—not quite silken enough to have a shimmer, and yet the sunlight illuminated a halo of deep pink surrounding it. Her eyebrows had a funny angle, but a welcoming one. Her lips curled up at the ends, even as she stood with her mouth slightly agape.

She had a snout that turned up at the end. She had ears that were just a bit too small.

And… she did have nice pasterns.

Night Glider’s hoof flew to her own face, suddenly aware that Sky was looking her over in much the same way.

She smirked at that. Reflexively.

“Hey,” she said.

Night blinked. “Hi.”

“You look—”

“—different than how I thought,” Night finished for her.

“I like it,” they said together.

They stared at one another a moment longer. Just taking it all in.

Night broke the silence with a small chuckle. “I think it’s gonna take me a while.”

Sky frowned. “A while to do what?”

“To match the face to the voice,” she replied, getting to her hooves. “And the voice to the… the things.”

Sky made a face. Something between a pained wince and an embarrassed smile.

“Sorry,” Night apologized, looking down at the ground. “We shouldn’t talk about the things anymore.”

“What? Of course not!”

Before Night knew it, Sky had rushed in and grabbed her hoof. Her gaze was dragged up from the ground, and the mares’ eyes met—truly met—for the very first time.

“I was wrong,” she said firmly, though that ghost of a smile still lingered on her lips. “We can’t just keep distracting ourselves and running away from things.”

Night swallowed.

She looked at Sky, just barely up at her, and saw the face of the thing she had run to, even if she hadn’t known it.

“But…” Night cleared her throat. “What if I… kinda liked the distractions?”

She smiled.

A wonderful, secretive smile.

And she laughed. She laughed the laugh that Night had always thought she’d been laughing, the one between the messages, the one she’d hid so she wasn’t too vulnerable to the stranger on the radio.

She pulled Night in closer, so their noses were practically touching, and she said, “that’s the great thing about us: I think we can have it both ways.”

The radios lay neglected in the dirt between the mares' hooves as they embraced, silent at last.

Author's Note

Thank you very much for reading ^^ I think, sadly, this story's concept was a bit too big for its word count, but I hope you all enjoy it nonetheless!

MAY

“I don’t think this is going to work out.”

Night Glider shook her head vehemently. “No. No way, I’m ready to go back to work! It was just a mist—”

“We can’t make mistakes in this business. I know you know that. So help me out, here.”

Dirt and pine needles crunched softly under Night Glider’s hooves as she trotted through the forest, trailmarkers long behind her. Her breath kept a steady pace with her strides.

The air here was hard to breathe. Fresh and warm and pine-scented, but still hard.

Or maybe it was the weight on her chest making it hard.

“Look. I know you’ve had a tough few… I know some stuff went down that you’d rather not talk about,” he said, turning his back to Night. “I get that. I’m not gonna hang you out to dry, okay? I’m glad you’re back.”

Night didn’t say anything. She gently shuffled her hooves and stared at the linoleum floor.

“You just need some time to readjust.”

Night paused at the crest of the next hill and tried to catch her breath.

Pegasi weren’t meant to get around on hoof. She was sure of that. Must have been a biological thing. You get used to flying, then you can’t get so far on the ground anymore.

Well, tough.

She would go it on hoof.

She would go all summer on hoof.

She couldn’t trust her wings anymore.

“You ever heard of Smokey Mountain National Park?”

Night shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”

“Big wildfire risk. They need lookouts who can keep watch during the summer months and call in anything… smokey, I guess,” he said with a little chuckle. “It’s a hard sell. Lonely and long. No flying, no searching, no rescuing. Just watching from a little tower.”

He dropped a pamphlet on the desk in front of Night Glider. ‘Wildfire Season at Smokey Mountain National Park’ it read in friendly, bold letters.

Night pulled it towards herself and peered down at the image curiously. A wide, flat room, up on stilts, overlooking a pine forest.

It looked peaceful.

“It’s a way to make a little money while you’re getting back on your hooves. I’ve already called the mare in charge. She said she’d be glad to have you aboard.”

Night Glider turned her head back, craning her neck for any sign of the watchtower she’d be spending her next few months in.

The trees were too tall.

She paused a moment to give her wings an experimental flap, but it still didn’t feel quite right.

Maybe they were weighing her down. Maybe they were to blame for it being so hard to breathe the fresh mountain air.

“You’ll be in touch with our meteorologist via radio,” the mare at the visitor’s center had told her. “She’ll send out a report each morning with wildfire predictions, and keep you posted if anything breaks out.”

“Meteorologist?” Night repeated.

“That’s right. Her name’s Clear Sky,” the mare told her. “Real nice filly. Single mom. Make sure you radio her as soon as you get to your tower—she’s the only other pony you’ll be talking to all summer. You report to her, she reports to us. If she loses track of you—”

“I’ll be on the missing pony list?”

The mare paused. “R-right.”

If Night Glider was reading her map correctly, the watchtower was just around the next bend.

If she wasn’t, she might be in for a worse summer than she had anticipated.

Night Glider picked up the pace, breaking into a light canter. Her hooves thumped softly in the drifts of hairy white pine needles coating the forest floor. Her wings hung suspended in the air at her sides, catching the wind like sails but not daring to flap.

“I hope you brought a book,” the mare had said, producing a small cloth bag from under her desk. “It gets boring up there. A whole summer, y’know.”

“I know,” Night said, taking the bag from the mare. “It’s okay. I can handle it.”

“And you’ve got a few hours of flying before you get there. Stay hydrated, okay?”

Night hesitated. “Um. What if I’m walking?”

The mare looked up at her. “Well, then, it’s more like two days.”

She hadn’t been wrong.

It had been about two days.

The sun was going down, and the air was cooling off—not that it was all that warm yet. Some trees really know how to hold onto a chill, though, and these trees did it excellently. It was as if they were oozing cold, sloughing it off in heavy clouds that then seeped into the discarded needles huddled about their roots.

Night Glider puffed up her feathers in an effort to hold warmth closer to her barrel.

Almost there.

She slid down a small embankment, dirt and pine needles crumbling down along with her, and broke into a gallop with her newfound momentum. Those tiny airbourne moments between strides, little gasps of weightlessness, were the closest thing to flight she’d dare let herself have.

The ground swelled under her once more, and the trees thinned, and her home for the next five months rose before her, stoic against the fiery sky.

The watchtower was sturdy. Perhaps not as sturdy as Night Glider would have liked, but certainly stronger and broader and simply more than she had anticipated. It rose several stories off the ground, clearing the tops of even the tallest pines, holding a single room aloft in the fresh air.

Night Glider approached the tower, her gallop slowing to a curious creep as her lungs struggled to catch up.

A bare wooden staircase wound its way around the tower in a corkscrew. Though it looked rather rickety, it also looked old—no sharp corners on the edges of the planks of wood, patches of cool green moss spreading here and there—and so Night Glider decided to trust it.

If it was going to fall over, it would have already. Right?

The base of the tower was as barebones as it gets; four thick, heavy, solid beams of wood piercing the heavens, criss-crossed by support beams that tangled together like a spider’s web.

Night Glider wondered what sort of shadow this thing must cast over the forest.

She put her hoof on the first step.

The step groaned its acknowledgement, but did not budge.

She put her hoof on the next.

She began to climb.

Her wings fell away from her sides very gently, as if they, too, were merely heavy clouds sinking down to the earth, buoyed by pockets of wind. Night Glider dared to allow herself that tiniest fleeting glimpse of flight before snapping them into her sides once more.

The door to the tower was locked. As she lifted the key from its place on her chest and jimmied it into the lock, Night Glider wondered why a firewatch tower would need a lock. When the door opened she decided it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

For some reason, Night Glider felt the word "quaint" jump to mind, though it was hardly the right one to describe what she was seeing. Perhaps some part of her still associated quaintness with oldness, rather than that particular brand of old-fashionedness that came with quilts and cats and teacups.

Or perhaps it was the sound of the door creaking open which brought the word to mind.

The tower was a strange mix of barebones and utterly maximalist. While the only true amenity in the single room was a beat-up cot, there were quite literally dozens of scientific instruments installed in the space, less than half of which had any meaning at all to Night Glider. Papers of all sorts similarly littered most surfaces—guide books filled with sticky notes, trail maps haphazardly folded down to size, edible plant leaflets laying open and sun-faded, datasheets printed from machines that were likely older than Night Glider herself, and pages torn from spiral bound notebooks still dribbling their spaghetti edges out the sides of misshapen stacks of potential tinder.

"Overwhelming" would have been a good word.

"Underwhelming" would have been a good word, too.

"Okey-dokey…" Night Glider muttered aloud as she took in the scene, though she immediately balked at the feeling of the phrase on her tongue.

"No matter what, the very first thing you should do is call in to Clear Sky and let her know you're there safe," she said, tapping the desk with perhaps undue importance. "If she doesn't hear from you, she's gonna lose a mind and a half."

"Got it," Night Glider agreed, hardly paying attention.

"No, no—sweetheart, this is a single mother we're talking about." She tapped the desk again. This time the importance was not so undue. "She's got overprotectiveness you wouldn't even believe."

Night Glider didn't respond to that, though she did give her a quick and emotionless glance.

"Call her. First thing. Don't forget."

Wasting no time, Night Glider approached the flurries of papers and began sweeping what she could out of the way. A few stray pages fluttered down around her hooves as the tabletop was slowly uncovered. Night did her best to step around the papers, but slipped on one or two as she fumbled her way through the unfamiliar surroundings.

At long last, she spotted the radio; a small thing, bright yellow, thankfully still nestled in its charger and jammed behind a teetering tower of books.

She picked it up and pressed the single large button on the side, and was rewarded with a quick pop of static as the radio sprang to life.

“Uh… hello?” she said into the radio. “This is Night Glider with the, uh… Smokey Mountain tower?”

Despite her immediate regret at the shakiness of her voice, Night Glider released the button and waited.

A moment passed. Then two. Night chewed her lip and looked around the room, a sort of dread bubbling up as she realized just how many papers she’d need to organize to make this space even remotely liveable.

Anxious and impatient, Night Glider lifted the radio again. “Hello?”

“Hi!”

Night felt her shoulders spring up around her jaw in surprise.

“Hi, sorry! I was trying to—well, really I was—it doesn’t matter,” the voice on the other end spluttered. “Hello! You’re Night Glider!”

Night didn’t quite know how to answer that. It wasn’t even technically a question. Her hoof hovered near the button as she tried to think of a response.

“I just get so anxious waiting for the lookouts to arrive,” Clear Sky explained. “Haven’t had to file a missing pony report yet! I’d like to keep that streak going, y’know?”

Her voice had a dry quality. Almost raspy, if Night Glider was hearing it right.

“Everything looking good over there?” Clear Sky asked. “I know the last guy to keep watch was a bit… well. You fill in the blank with whatever you want and you’ll probably be right.”

Night Glider looked over the tower one more time. A stack of barely-contained papers slipped off the edge of one bit of countertop and quickly spread across the floor.

“Uh. I’m sensing that.”

“Oh, no. That bad, huh?”

“It’s fine. I’ll need something to do, right?” Night Glider grumbled. “Might as well clean up some other dude’s mess.”

Clear Sky turned on the radio in time to snort. “Story of my life.”

A witty reply didn’t come to Night Glider, partly because she wasn’t really the witty type, and partly because she was simply too exhausted to put in any effort at all. The radio stayed quiet, and so Night set it aside on the counter and turned her gaze to the view outside the windows on her every side.

The sun was dropping, ever so slowly, behind the mountains on the horizon. It flared bright orange. The orange filled the watchtower, throwing stark black shadows across every surface. Night had to shield her eyes to make out any of the surrounding landscape at all.

It all seemed so small from up here. Even now, having just marched her way through two days’ worth of forest, Night thought it looked distantly fake. A diorama, maybe.

The watchtower was sturdy, but it, too, had a fake feeling. Its windows sealed out any hint of wind and weather, any of the rising thrum of crickets and cicadas. She may as well have been watching it all on screens from the safety of home.

An open window would be nice. Perhaps over her bed.

Night circled the large map at the center of the room to her cot and climbed up with all four hooves. It had barely any give—though, to be honest, she was more distracted by the feeling of something crackling beneath the covers.

With a bit of fumbling and stomping, Night managed to tug the covers out from under her hooves and toss them down to the wood floor of the watchtower.

A single sheet of notebook paper lay there on the lumpy mattress. Though Night’s hooves had managed to punch it into a shape not unlike a coffee filter, the hasty writing was still somewhat legible by the light of the setting sun:

I love you I love you I love you

I wish I didn’t

It would be easier for you

But I must not tell a lie

I love you I love you I love you

Night furrowed her brows. She read the thing—notes? Poetry? Love letter?—a few times over before deciding that, whatever it was, it was likely not her business. She tucked it safely between two books at the head of her bed. She would figure out what to do with all this stuff later.

As soon as Night found the lock on the window, the radio crackled to life again:

“Hey—you still there?”

Night sighed. “I can’t come to the phone right now…” she muttered, returning to fussing over the window. The sticky latch seemed almost wedged into place.

“Hello…” Clear Sky all but sang into the receiver. “Hello, hello… Night Glider, come in…”

“For the love of—” Night threw all of her weight against the latch, and it mercifully popped open, and the window with it. Before Night could register any of it, she was face-down in the cot, cool night air rushing over her exposed feathers.

“Night Glider!” Clear Sky repeated, swapping out her sing-song voice for a conspiratorial whisper. “Hey! You still there?”

Night growled softly to herself as she rolled off the mattress and stomped across the room to the radio.

“I’m still here,” Night replied.

“Oh, hey!” Clear Sky giggled to herself, part embarrassed and part victorious.

“I’ll be here a while,” Night added. “You don’t have to check.”

“Well, I know that.” Clear Sky scoffed. “You’d be surprised how many ponies forget about the radio. Either they don’t charge it or they just plain don’t bring it along on patrols. I guess a lot of folks take the job to get away from other ponies, and then they’re frustrated they have to carry one around with them everywhere, but… well, hey. That’s the job.”

Night did not respond to that. “Anyway?”

“Anyway,” Clear Sky agreed. “I just wanted to remind you to keep me charged!”

She laughed. A mom laugh.

Night Glider sighed lightly as she snuggled down into bed. “Mhm,” she murmured, eyes already drifting closed.

“And, um…” There was a very long pause. “Whatever it is you’re trying to get away from… well, I hope it gets better.”

Night’s eyes snapped back open.

She laid there for a long moment, staring blankly at the radio in her hoof, trying to think of something to say in return. The wind whistled through the wraparound porch and curled its chilly fingers over the edge of the window. Night Glider tugged the blankets up to her chin.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Clear Sky said simply. “Goodnight, Night Glider.”

“G-goodnight, Clear Sky.”

Nothing in return.

Night Glider stared at the radio for another long moment. Though she hardly knew Clear Sky, she didn’t seem the type to leave a thought like that hanging. Or any thought, really.

She clambered out of bed, slow and lethargic, to replace the radio in its charging cradle. Her hooves dragged through drifts and flurries of discarded papers as she wound her way back to the cot and finally collapsed.

Though her eyes felt sandy and weak, Night scooted across the cot and pressed herself up against the wall of the tower. From here, she could make out a sliver of the night sky between the tower’s roof and the mountain peaks.

The sky was so clear out here, clearer even than it was at the edge of the desert. More than just stars, Night could make out the distant swirls and streaks of other galaxies against the endless black.

She sighed contentedly.

The stars would always be there for her.

Sleep soon got the better of her, though.

Night Glider dreamed of flying.

There is a feeling adjacent to deja vu that, every now and then, creeps up and pounces on you without much warning. Whereas deja vu convinces you that an unfamiliar feeling is not as new as you may think, this feeling is truer to reality; it is a certainty that, despite an experience being new to you, you will have it many, many more times.

The feeling crept over Night Glider as she slept, fighting through the inky darkness of half-dreams, on the back of Clear Sky’s tuneless singing.

She was singing.

Not a gentle tune. Not a comfort.

Loud. Imitating trumpets. A morning fanfare which scraped against the topmost ceiling of the radio’s transmission power.

Night Glider found her strength and managed to bury her head under her pillow, though it only just barely muffled Clear Sky's triumphant song.

“Good morning!” Clear Sky shouted. “This is your official wake-up call! You will be given a moment to reply before round two!"

True to her word, Clear Sky released the button on the radio, and the lookout tower was over again bathed in a blissful early-morning quiet. Night Glider allowed herself to relax before reaching for the radio to respond.

When Clear Sky said ‘a moment’, though, she really only meant the one. Her voice exploded from the radio once more, the same off-key song in the same full-chested voice. Night Glider swore she could hear it echoing off the mountain range itself, could hear birds scattering in fear of this new, exceptionally loud predator.

"Wakey-wakey, Night Glider!"

The sound of one hoof pounding on wooden floors accompanied the shout.

Night growled under her breath. A hoof shot out from under the covers and snatched the radio out of its cradle. “I’m up.”

There was a long pause. When the radio popped back to life, Clear Sky was already a little out of breath, as if she’d been laughing. “I had a feeling. Good to see you survived the first night—we lose most of our recruits within twenty-four hours.”

Night only furrowed her brows.

“Kidding,” she added, holding in a snicker.

Night Glider didn’t reply.

This seemed to be an expected result.

“You ready for your first day on the job?” Clear Sky asked. Cheery, though with a hint of… sass wasn’t exactly it. Almost secrecy. A little over-the-shoulder smile and wink. A brand of sarcasm that was altogether new for Night.

“Do I… need to be ready?” Night replied warily.

“Time will tell, I guess,” Clear Sky mused. “I’m supposed to walk you through all of your duties, so grab a granola bar and map and let’s get moving.”

Night Glider let out another disgruntled sigh. “Aren’t you just sitting in some tower?”

A pause.

“Maybe so.”

“Aren’t I supposed to just be sitting in some tower?”

A longer pause.

“Who’s to say?” Clear Sky replied. “You really wanna miss out on all this nature? Might as well get a lay of the land, don’t you think?”

Night Glider ground her teeth.

No matter what Clear Sky said, all that echoed in Night’s mind was that suspiciously specific platitude whispered over the radio late last night:

“Whatever it is you’re trying to get away from… well, I hope it gets better.”

“I think I’d rather head out on my own, y’know?” Night said. “Do a little exploring. Stumble around. That’s more my style, really.”

A much, much longer pause.

Night Glider stood still at the edge of her bed. The sun was still technically beneath the horizon, but those very early rays of light were beginning to stretch up, shooting golden beams across the sky and sending matching ones across the interior of the tiny tower. Even so, the last glimpses of stars and swirls of distant galaxies still burned against the darkness.

“O-okay!” Clear Sky replied, at long last. “Sure! That’s a… that’s a fine tactic. Get out there and see what you see.”

“Cool.”

“Just make sure you bring the radio, okay?” Clear Sky reminded her firmly. “And, really, I’m here for any questions you might have. Anything you wanna know about or talk about, I’m your mare.”

Night nodded, though she didn’t know why. “Yeah. You’re the only mare I’ve got.”

Another pause. “Right.”

Night Glider nearly replied, but the feel of that little plastic button under her hoof convinced her otherwise.

Instead, Night gathered her things (radio included), stuck a granola bar in her mouth, and headed down the spiraling tower steps into the early morning. That’s how it was meant to be, after all—lonely. Isolating. No one took this job looking to make friends.

They took this job to be alone.

The wet earth still held that last chill of dawn as Night Glider trotted away from the lookout tower and into the beckoning woods.

This was the point, after all.

Maybe not at first. At first, the point was to have a job. Any job.

Now, though, by the growing light of day, the point was the woods. And being alone in them.

She tried to feel it—the isolation, the perfect aloneness of having an entire national park to oneself. She tried to absorb the wind as it blew, the sun as it rose, the birds as they sang.

Tried to be even less than one.

Tried to be none at all.

She closed her eyes as she cantered, weightless, over the dry earth. Her wings fell away from her sides. The sharp scent of pine curled into her lungs and lifted her chest.

And then the radio popped and hissed at her hip.

Night's eyes squeezed shut a little bit tighter, almost imperceptibly so, in a vain attempt to ignore the ramblings of her compulsory partner.

"—beautiful out here…"

So distant and faint. Clear Sky must have been across the room from the radio. And mumbling.

Night slowed down. The thumping of her hooves softened, and she listened closer to the far-away static emanating from her side.

"Are you sure?"

She skidded to a halt.

The silence of the forest bore down on her, only the constant static of the radio cutting through it.

"—a fairytale—"

Night unclipped the radio from her saddlebags and held it near her face. She did her best to control her breathing as she listened intently, ear pricked, eyes squinting. Nothing more than distant mumbling—perhaps two voices?—met her. She couldn't pick out any other words.

After another moment or two, the radio went silent again.

Night briefly considered radioing back, just to ask what all the fuss was about, but she quelled her curiosity.

She had five more months of this ahead of her.

Exhausting all sense of mystery so early would only serve to make the next few months drag by. That, and Night wanted to be sure that Clear Sky wasn't encouraged to radio her any more than absolutely necessary.

Night fastened the radio back on her saddlebags.

Its presence was already starting to feel familiar.

Interlude I

Clear Sky brushed her mane back behind her ear with a single hoof. It hung there, heavy and straight, a weight on her ear until she leaned forward once more and it tumbled out again.

She should have packed mane ties. Always something forgotten.

The hardest part of forgetting things was not feeling guilty about it, she thought. Everyone forgets now and then. And yet, when it’s you that’s forgotten something, it weighs on you. A sudden punch to the chest, clean through to the other side, leaving a hole where the thing should have been.

Clear Sky’s hoof fell to her breast, where it lingered a moment before dropping to the table.

"—out here."

Clear Sky jumped at the sudden voice from the radio.

It was… gruff. Yet it didn't quite match Night Glider's as she'd come to know it. Not that she knew it all that well of course—the mare had hardly said twenty words to her.

"—perfect for us."

A stallion?

Clear Sky furrowed her brows and picked up the radio. She squinted at it, willing the voice to continue, but to no avail.

The static whined a moment longer, then unceremoniously clicked off.

Her tower was silent again.

Clear Sky turned the radio over in her magic, one delicate tendril running quizzically over the button.

She considered radioing Night Glider, her supposed new partner in crime. Perhaps she'd met a hiker. Perhaps she had a question.

Perhaps they were talking about birdwatching. Or stargazing. Or foraging. Photography. Any of the many wonderful things which one might occupy themselves with in the woods.

Clear Sky thought that Night Glider probably liked stargazing.

She considered asking Night Glider if she had remembered to bring mane ties along. She was only a few days’ hike away, after all. She could stand to make the trip.

It might be a nice distraction.

She looked at the radio. Carefully.

She decided not to call.

JUNE

On the heels of lively May comes the transcendental stillness of June. It seems that, as the world heats up, all anything or anyone can do is sprawl their sweaty bodies out in the shade and breathe. It is the slow remembering of the heat of the summer that causes everything to grind to a halt.

In much the same way, the exciting newness of Night Glider's lookout routine had settled into a sort of malaise. She woke each day to Clear Sky's jaunty pre-dawn singing, took a small tour of the surrounding area on hoof while munching on morning rations, and returned to her lookout tower just as the sunlight was turning from gentle yellow to stark white. Here she would spend most of the day split between testing her knowledge of the scientific instruments in her tower and cleaning up after the previous lookout's blizzard of papers. Another tour of the area before dinner, this time checking for campsites which might be violating fire safety guidelines, and she'd be home in time for dinner and a bit of reading.

In the past month, of course, Night Glider had not seen another pony in the flesh. As much time as she spent looking for ponies to scold for improper trail behavior, it was only ever Clear Sky on the radio—mostly loud and clear, occasionally distant and garbled—who accompanied her.

And that was fine.

She was fine with being alone.

That was the point, after all.

Each of Clear Sky's kindhearted check-ins was met with a civil disinterest. Frustratingly, this did not seem to diminish Clear Sky's dedication in befriending Night in the least. She still called in with a frequency that was just slightly too high, always eager to offer advice (both helpful and not), anecdotes (both interesting and not), and jokes (both funny and not).

This morning, though, Night Glider had politely and insistently informed Clear Sky to leave her be.

"What's on the docket today, Night?"

Night sighed. "I think it's about time I tried to actually get rid of some of this junk,” she said. “All I’ve done so far is move it around and, shocker, it’s still a lot of junk.”

"I'm guessing by 'this junk' you mean Star Hunter's notes? And uh… whatever else?"

"Yep."

"And… I'm guessing you'd like me to leave you alone so you can concentrate?"

Night's hoof hovered over the button. "Uh. Yep."

Night Glider squinted at yet another messily-torn notebook page scrawled on in smudged hoofwriting, barely catching more than a few words. What words she could make out were all very… mushy? Lovey-dovey stuff. Poetry stuff.

She tossed this sheet on the pile to go and started in on the next one.

Before she could make out even a single word, the radio beside her crackled softly.

Night deflated in an instant. Her ears pinned against her head as she mentally prepared for yet another deluge of Clear Sky's disconnected musings.

Clear Sky did not speak, however. Not a word. The radio hummed, gentle but insistent, and only a light and bubbly sound, almost musical, came through the other side.

A giggle.

The sort a mare puts on when she knows she's being watched—just slightly too rehearsed, with a perfectly ladylike snort thrown in for good measure.

When she had finished, the radio clicked off.

Night frowned. For a long moment, all she could do was stare at the radio beside her, wondering what in Equestria might possess Clear Sky to transmit this bout of staged laughter to her.

She tried to push down the curiosity.

The curiosity bubbled back up.

Night's hoof released the paper she had been holding and snuck over to the radio, lifting it to her face but not yet daring to press the button.

The cicadas buzzed endlessly on the other side of the open window. A heat you could hear.

Before she knew it, Night Glider had pressed the button and lifted the radio to her lips. "Uh… Clear Sky?"

There was a long pause.

"Yes?"

"Did you just… giggle girlishly at me?"

Night Glider rethought her approach the moment the words left her mouth.

“I mean. I heard a giggle,” Night corrected, darkly serious. “Did you giggle?”

Another pause. “Did I giggle?”

“I heard a giggle!” Night defended vehemently. “Like a little—a giggle!”

“You think I turned on my radio just to giggle at you?”

“I dunno!” Night scoffed. “I-I don’t know you! Maybe you’re a giggler!”

Clear Sky broke into raucous, barely-controlled laughter, not bothering to turn off her radio. She snorted profusely. Not a match for the giggle Night had thought she’d heard. Of course, Night could hardly focus on disproving her theory with the embarrassed heat rising in her cheeks.

“Wow.” Clear Sky sighed, her voice still thick with the echoes of her laughter. “Only a month and you’re hearing—what were your exact words? Girlish giggling?”

“Y’know, I have a lot more of this crazy guy’s notes to get through, how about—”

“You’re the one who radioed me,” Clear Sky cut in. “You sure the isolation isn’t getting to you?”

“I’m sure.”

“Are you hearing any giggling now?” Clear Sky asked snidely.

“No,” Night corrected firmly. “It came through the radio.”

Clear Sky paused to think. “Maybe you’re catching someone else’s frequency,” she said. “It’s unlikely, but not impossible.”

Night Glider looked down at her radio, turning it over in her hoof, as if just staring at it might reveal the answer. “Maybe,” she agreed. “Yeah. Must be.”

“If that’s the case, we should switch over to another channel,” Clear Sky said. “These lines are supposed to be secure. Though, honestly, I can’t imagine what a hiker would want with our conversations. Let’s tune to channel three and hope no one else giggles at you, okay?”

Night let out a tense sigh. “Great.”

The radio hiccuped as Night Glider adjusted the frequency, but seemed to settle in on the same gentle white noise as always.

“Can you hear me?” Clear Sky asked.

“Loud and clear,” Night replied.

“Perfect. Just let me know if it happens again and we’ll switch to a new channel,” Clear Sky explained matter-of-factly. “We can stay one step ahead of whoever’s listening into our gossip sessions.”

Night fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Right. Thanks.”

"No problemo."

Night placed the radio beside her once again and squinted back down at the next page of notes. This one was similarly unreadable, with only a few words—’love’, ‘always’, ‘protect’, ‘safe’, and so on—actually standing the test of time. Another attempt at an unsent love note, maybe? Hard to tell. Certainly not important.

Toss.

A few more pages went by in this way. Many of them had scraggly edges after being torn from spiral-bound notebooks, while others seem to have served as coasters and napkins (what else could possibly smudge them up so badly?). Some had a small vertical tear near the top, which Night Glider eventually matched to that of a pushpin.

He had tacked these to the wall?

Weird, but perhaps not any weirder than the existence of these piles and piles of failed love letters in the first place. If you’re gonna sink yourself into becoming some sort of gushy poet in isolation, you might as well go all the way, right? Start tying things together with string and staring at your work as you drift off to sleep.

Toss, toss. A lot of rambly garbage, very little of it interesting even from a snooping perspective.

Just as the ‘toss it’ pile was reaching the height of Night’s seat, she spotted something colorful poking out of the center of her sorting stack. Slowly, cautiously, she gave it a small tug. The stack shifted with it, and Night had to scramble to keep it from toppling over. While the stack mostly held itself together, a few papers came tumbling off the top, and scattered themselves across her workspace.

Night heaved a sigh, gave the stack a shove into a more stable position, and looked over the papers that had spilled in front of her.

Most were the same as the others—notebook pages covered in smudged pen—but one stood out to Night as familiar: the pamphlet she had been given by her superior when she’d first learned about the job.

Night frowned and picked it up.

It was a colorful thing. Lots of picturesque images of the area (as if you could take a bad picture of this place), all of them as desolate as Night had come to know them. The pamphlet listed out the barest minimum of a lookout’s duties, as well as all the great opportunities one would have to ‘be one with nature’ and ‘learn about the environment’.

It wasn’t her specific pamphlet. Night wouldn’t have even thought to bring it with her, to be honest. No, while it was exactly the same print, this must have been brought by Star Hunter, the previous lookout.

Night Glider folded the pamphlet back up and went to throw it on the toss pile, but another scribbled note on the back caught her eye.

This one was a little more certain. Night couldn’t be sure why, exactly, this note was easier to decipher than the others, but she could read nearly every word:

May 14

M: It’s beautiful out here.

S: I told you. This will be perfect for us.

M: Are you sure?

S: Sure I’m sure. It’s just like a fairytale.

Night furrowed her brows. She read the note over again. Then a third time. She noticed that the date was written in a different colored pen—blue as opposed to the black of the text itself. She read it a fourth time, as if this revelation might help her understand the note a little better, but came up empty.

A… playwright?

Pretty crappy play.

It sounded sort of familiar to Night Glider, but not in any way she could confidently pin down. Just generic enough to be from any book, film, or theater production under the sun. He possibly even overheard some campers and creepily committed it to paper.

Like a weirdo.

Night read the note over again. Could have been a play. Could have been notes on the hikers.

As little as it actually mattered, what with this guy being gone and all, Night couldn't help but feel that little nagging sense of investigative duty. Maybe it was residual from search-and-rescue, possibly from Our Town, very likely a bit of both—but Night Glider couldn't bring herself to even leave the possibility of creepiness alone.

She was the lookout, after all.

Night reached for the radio and clicked it on. For a moment, she just listened to the device hum in her hoof, unsure of what to say.

"H-hey, Clear Sky?" she squeaked out, only half-formed. "You there?"

A pause. A pop of static. "How many times have I told you to call me Sky, now?" she reminded Night. "What's up?"

Night cleared her throat. "Uh… remember when you mentioned the previous lookout?" she prompted.

Another pause. This one a bit tense. "Mhm."

"You said he was a bit… something or other," Night recalled. "Was he, like, a writer?"

Clear Sky scoffed. "He may have been," she said, more contemptuous than Night had anticipated.

Night didn't reply, only looked down at the radio in confusion.

"I honestly couldn't tell you—he really kept to himself. To an absurd degree." The radio clicked off. Then, after a moment, it clicked on again. "I don't think he was the 'working on the next great Equestrian novel' kind of weird. More of an obsessive weird. I remember always having to repeat myself two and three times because he wanted verbatim notes on every little thing."

Night Glider looked back down at the pamphlet and read the notes over again. "Hm."

"Did you find something creepy?" Clear Sky asked. "I wouldn't be surprised if you did. If I were you, I'd just get rid of it. It's not doing anyone any good."

"N-not creepy, exactly." Night reviewed the pamphlet. "I dunno. Maybe."

Clear Sky did not reply.

"I guess it doesn't matter," Night agreed. "I'll get rid of it."

"As long as it's legal, I think that's for the best."

"Alright. Thanks."

Night set the radio down and tossed the pamphlet in with the rest of the trash. For a long moment, all she could do was stare down at it, wondering what obsession it had resulted from.

"While I have you—" Clear Sky's sudden intrusion on Night's thoughts caused her to jump. "—any chance you could run out west and check something out for me? There's been some complaints of a missing trailmarker on Beetleback. I know it's not technically your job, but you seem to have your head screwed on right. Or… at least righter than the average hiker, I guess."

Night glanced out her window, watching the sun climb higher in the sky. "As long as I can be back in time for lunch," she said.

"It'll be quick! Just bring a can of spray paint," Clear Sky instructed. "Beetleback is the orange trail. Most hikers seem to be getting lost at around the half-mile mark, so just head out and hit a big tree or rock or something with an arrow."

"Aye-aye, captain."

Night Glider stood, stretched, and went looking for her saddlebag. Now that she had familiarized herself with the lookout tower, getting packed up for a quick hike was a practically mindless activity. Luckily, she had only just uncovered the spray paint a few days ago, and so easily located the orange and popped it in her bag.

Radio at her hip, Night Glider kicked open the screen door and began the long trot down the spiraling stairs.

It was times like these that tempted her to flight again. Not only would it have been so much easier to glide down to the forest floor, but the sudden burst of fresh air and direct sunlight that met her at the door was intoxicating in a way that almost caused her to forget her last attempt and flying.

Almost.

The fear which bubbled up in her chest made her clench her wings down all the more tightly. It felt even more unnatural than simply flying. The rubbing of her wing joints against her sides was a reminder with every step.

Night's hooves met the cool, wet earth with heavy thuds, and she took off towards the trailhead on her right.

Beetleback trail was one of the easier hikes around in the area. While many of the other trails required a bit of rock-climbing (or, at the very least, some nerve-wracking boulder-crossing), this one took wide detours around the rockier areas. The worst thing to face on Beetleback was a moderate dirt incline, or perhaps an aggressive and vocal bluejay. As such, it was the amateur's trail of choice… meaning it wasn't exactly a surprise that they couldn't figure their way out of a missing trailmarker.

Night Glider kept a brisk pace as she cantered through the woods. A quick trip. Back in time for lunch.

The orange flashes on trees and stones flickered in Night's periphery. She kept track of them by the beat of her stride:

Thud. Thud. Thud.

A flash.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Another.

The deeper into the woods she went, the more the heat of the June sun retreated. Even now, nearly noon, there was an unexpected freshness in the air. A near-breeze, only present so long as she ran between the trees, which curled over her cheeks and through her mane.

Before she knew it, the spell was broken.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

No flash.

Night skidded to a halt, kicking up a cloud of powdery earth. Nothing but the sound of her own deep panting filled the space around her.

The cause of the missing trailmarker wasn't immediately obvious. On some level, Night had expected to see evidence of some kind of damage—perhaps even something malicious and purposeful.

It wasn't all that. Night found the shadow of the last mark, faded by heat and rain as it had sat in a sunny spotlight.

Just chance and time. There was something poetic about that, she thought.

Night stepped back from the old mark, surveyed her surroundings, and painted a bright arrow on a nearby stone. This one was shaded by the boughs of a very full, stunningly green pine. Perhaps a little more permanent.

The can clinked against her thermos as Night dropped it back into her saddlebag. She stood a moment longer, partly to catch her breath and partly to consider completing the trail.

As if on cue, her radio fizzled to life.

Night rolled her eyes and unclipped it from her hip. She fell against a nearby tree as she held it to her ear, awaiting Clear Sky's latest commentary.

The radio was quiet. For a long time. Long enough that Night gave it a small shake, wondering if something had come loose.

"You wrote this for me?"

A soft voice. Masculine in texture, but with an unmistakable and surprising gentleness.

"I wrote it… about you," came the reply. Gruff, but feminine.

Night froze. Her breath still came heavy, and she struggled to quiet it—it easily overpowered the voices on her radio.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," the stallion read.

"Ah, c'mon," the mare cut in. It sounded like she may have approached him; the subtle crunching of detritus underhoof barely burbled through the radio. "Don't—"

"I wish I didn't. It would be easier for you," the stallion read on. "But I cannot tell a lie."

He paused.

For a long time.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," the stallion finished.

The radio clicked off.

In the ensuing silence, Night Glider found herself still struggling to catch her breath. Her heart was still hammering in her chest, but differently now; realization washed slowly over her as she recalled the page she'd trampled that very first night. The unfinished love note—or so she had thought.

She stared at her radio.

She could see it: Star Hunter scribbling like mad, trying to take down this poetry illicitly overheard in the woods.

She could see him walking the trails. Pen and sheafs of paper in hoof. Overstuffed spiral bound notebooks.

A record of the voices.

She clicked on the radio.

"Clear Sky?" she squeaked.

"How many times have I asked you to call me—"

"Sky," Night replied. "What was it you said about the radios catching other frequencies?"

"Ugh, is it happening again already?" Sky groaned. "We can switch channels. Maybe I should look into—"

"No, that's not what I—" Night paused, took a breath, and gathered herself. "This is gonna sound stupid, but… the frequencies have to be happening now… right?"

Sky was silent a long moment. "Um. Someone could be playing a recording, I guess."

"How likely is that?"

"Not very," Sky admitted with a casual laugh. "What, do you think you're being pranked or something?"

Night stared down at her radio again, as if peering through the grills might reveal the answer. As if the voices might speak to her again with enough wishful thinking.

"I dunno," Night said.

"Care to give me anything less cryptic than that to work with?" Sky asked, perhaps a bit sly. "I am here to help, after all."

Night sighed. "I-it's really hard to explain."

And Sky said, "Try me."

“But where do you think it’s coming from?” Sky asked, whispered in the cadence of a sleepover secret.

Night sighed and rolled onto her back. Her cot groaned under the motion. “I dunno.”

“I mean—it has to be coming from somewhere, right?” Sky nickered softly to herself. “A recording? A staged prank? Ooh! Maybe an audiobook?”

“I-I don’t think so, Sky,” Night said with a light chuckle. “Seems like a weird joke to play when you aren’t even sure if ponies are listening.”

“An accident, then,” Sky decided. “A busted walkie talkie that’s just… sitting at the bottom of someone’s bag?”

“If it’s busted, how did they manage to switch channels right when we did?”

Sky clicked her tongue. “Shoot. You’re right.”

Night held the radio over her head a moment longer, waiting for Sky to continue her thought. When she did not, Night dropped the radio to her chest, nestling it into her fur and waiting patiently for her companion to continue.

A long, low rush of wind washed over the forest. The sound of it—like a wave at the beach—snuck in through the window and spilled over the sill onto Night, accompanied by a spot of yellow sunlight.

“Well,” Sky said at last, her voice muffled further by the dense fur on Night’s chest, “we have to do something about it.”

Night furrowed her brows. “Um. How do you figure?”

“We can’t have random voices cutting into our airwaves! Can you imagine how dangerous that could be in an emergency?”

Night couldn’t, but she didn’t say so.

“It’s purely pragmatic,” Sky continued. “Entirely sensible and completely within our job descriptions to investigate the voices of forgotten lovers on your radio.”

That was what she said, at least. The words she said. Night Glider couldn’t help but sense an undertone, however—one of pure, unmitigated glee.

Night snorted. “You’re excited about this, aren’t you?”

Sky snorted back. “Night. C’mon,” she said. “You’ve got a haunted radio. Of course I’m excited.”

Night felt something tug at the corner of her mouth. “You’re kind of a nerd, aren’t you?”

There was a long silence. “Honestly, I’m really glad you can’t see the stack of mystery novels I packed for company,” she whispered, as if she had anyone to hide it from. “Wouldn’t exactly be helping my case.”

Night laughed. For the first time in a long time, it felt genuine.

“What’s the harm in a little investigation?” Sky mused. “Star Hunter certainly helped himself. Why can’t we?”

Night sighed. “Don’t we have to… I dunno, report this?” she asked carefully. “Isn’t that the job?”

“Trust me. The folks running this place have bigger fish to fry than this,” Sky pointed out. “It’s our job to filter the disasters for them. Plus… won’t it be kind of fun to keep it a secret?”

Night hesitated.

Secrets.

Secrets were a loaded concept.

She had kept them before. Secrets within secrets. It made her stomach churn just thinking about it.

And yet…

Well, there was a strange lift, too. A shedding. Like the sweat-it-out lightness of a hot summer morning. A first good secret after so many gone wrong. A first strong flight after—

Night swallowed hard. “Yeah,” she agreed, her voice thick. “Yeah. I think I could use the distraction, anyway.”

Sky pressed the button on her radio, but the words seemed to get stuck on the tip of her tongue. Night could almost hear her holding back the ‘from what?’, a natural response to the world’s easiest set-up. She braced herself for the inevitable awkward refusal to answer,

“It’ll be a good one, for sure,” Sky said. Softly.

Silence.

Night clutched the radio closer to her chest. She focused on the way the light warmed her hoof, the way the warmth traveled as the sun moved slowly across the sky. An ever-moving line of heat that worked its way over her.

A distraction. Like a jigsaw puzzle, or a good book, or a shopping trip. A hike in the woods. A summer as a lookout.

A distraction.

That was what she needed.

"Hey." Night Glider cleared her throat. "Can you see the sky from where you are?"

"No, I typically do my weather forecasting from a steel bunker a few stories underground."

Night rolled her eyes, but found herself breathing an involuntary sigh of relief. "Hilarious."

Sky chuckled,light and airy and not the least but superior. "I'm looking out a window just like yours right now," she said. "It's a clear night, isn't it?"

Night didn't say anything. She merely nodded, even though she knew Sky couldn't see her.

"There's a joke in there somewhere about the two of us," Sky said. "I'm not going to make one, but do me a solid and imagine I did."

For some reason, Night felt her cheeks flush at that.

"What am I supposed to be looking for?" Sky asked. "I don't know one thing about stars. They're pretty and all, but… that's all I've got."

"Well, lucky for you, I'm a bit of an astronomy nerd. Which probably cancels out your crime nerdery," she commented dryly.

"Oh, I think astronomy is way nerdier," Sky said without skipping a beat.

Night, once again, found herself speechless—not so much as a result of her tongue as it was a skipped beat in her brain.

"What am I supposed to be seeing, then, master astronomer?" Sky asked.

"Hm." Night rolled her head over, pressing her cheek against the exterior wall of the tower. The forest thrummed back at her like the ocean through a conch shell. "Well… that huge purple-green smear is one of the arms of our galaxy. It's called the Great Ripple."

Sky snorted. "Why?"

"Because it looks like a ripple?" Night said. "From the inside. Like we're the pebble "

There was a silence as Sky thought about that.

"What color is 'purple-green'?" she asked.

Night closed her eyes and sighed. "That's two colors."

"And 'smear'? Really?" Sky clicked her tongue. "You can do better."

"You knew exactly what I was talking about!"

"Ugh, but it's space!" Sky replied. "It's so mysterious and beautiful and… and you make it sound like a culture in a petri dish!"

Night opened her mouth to reply, but Sky clicked on the radio before she could make a sound.

"I thought you said you were a space nerd."

"I am," Night insisted. "I'm just not… I dunno, a poet? Is that what you want?"

"Why don't you try?"

"Why don't you try?"

Sky sniffed lightly, as if tossing her mane over her shoulder in disdain. "Fine. I will," she said.

A long pause.

Night did her best to suppress a smile as she drew the radio in towards her chest.

"A broad band of, um… mauve," she began. "That's right, isn't it? Don't answer that."

Night snickered softly.

"And mint. Mint green," she added, with a bit more certainty. "Like a big… brush stroke. Like it was painted there. With a bit of panache, too."

Night looked up at the sky again.

It was a little minty.

"You want me to use the word 'panache' when I'm talking to you about the stars?"

"I'm just saying, would it kill you to add a little flair?" Sky asked, her voice dripping with faux frustration. "I'm not asking for the moon, here. Just the stars."

It wasn't that funny, but it made Night laugh. A stupid, hiccuping laugh that she did her best to push back down, even though it made her cheeks hurt to do it.

"Has anyone ever told you you're—"

"Just fill in the blank, and you'll probably be right."

Night smirked. "You don't wanna hear it?"

"Save it for later," Sky said. "It's only June, after all."

Only June.

"Deal," Night murmured back.

She held the radio up a moment longer, waiting for those next words to come, but it ended there. As it should have, really. A natural end to a conversation between new friends.

Still, Night waited patiently to hear more.

She curled into herself, hugging the radio to her chest.

Mere moments passed before the radio fizzed softly into her fur.

“Forget about them, okay?”

Not Sky.

It was the stallion.

His voice low, gentle as he could manage.

Night Glider’s body tensed as she held her breath, straining to hear above the sounds of the woods outside her window.

“All that matters right now is you and me,” the stallion said. Though his voice was soft and gentle, there was an unmistakable force behind it. Almost an order. “We’re strong. Leave them behind.”

There was a rustling sound. Shifting, like limbs against grass.

Then a long sigh. A relaxed sigh. A safe sigh.

The fizzing petered out.

Night drew in a sharp breath, then scrambled to press the button on her radio.

“Sky!” she hissed. “I-I heard them again!”

Sky clicked on the radio. For a moment, all she could do was breathe, and the soft sound of her breath on the microphone made Night’s scalp tingle.

“Me too.”

Interlude II

The soft tinkling of Sky’s magic was bright against the crackle of her single candle—nearly as bright as the teal glow it cast over the inside of her tower.

She ran a tendril of magic over the variety of instruments before her, pausing now and then to squint at the numbers or tap on a stubbornly caught dial. Her brows crinkled ever so slightly, and the very tip of her tongue crept out from between her lips as she scratched cryptic notes in her logbook.

There was a storm coming.

Not a particularly big or dangerous one, she thought, but a storm nonetheless.

When you were on firewatch, storms were never really as bad as they were anywhere else. A good storm meant wet vegetation, which meant that the forest was less likely to burn, which meant a few days of sweet relief from constant vigilance.

Could it be a pain? Of course. Could a stray lightning bolt send the forest up in smoke anyway? Almost certainly.

But rain slowed the spread. Rain kept it contained. Rain made fire easier to bear.

Sky glanced over at her radio. She had already said goodnight to her friend, but she had an odd feeling that she would want the call.

Something had changed between them. It may have been hard to describe, but it was there, certain as the heat of the sun on your back.

Sky picked up the radio and pressed the button. “Hey,” she hissed. “Night. Still awake?”

She released the button and waited, but not nearly as long as she’d thought.

“Yeah,” Night mumbled. “What’s up?”

Sky smiled to herself. “It’s going to rain tomorrow. Our first real summer storm.”

Night let out a long sigh. The radio’s poor speakers made it sound like wind in the trees, or water over rocks in a river.

“I love the rain,” she said. Dark with near-sleep, but still with its own lightness and wist.

“Me too,” Sky agreed softly.

The pair was silent. Not even the static of the radio cut into the quiet of the night. In the silence, Sky could feel it; the pricking of her scalp as the pressure plummeted and the storm rolled in.

“Are you keeping the radio near your bed now?” Sky asked.

A pause. “What’s it to you?”

“You don’t have to do that,” Sky said, chuckling lightly and guiltily in equal measure. “I promise to quit being a pest.”

“Yeah, well…” Night nickered softly. “I think you’ve earned the right to pester me.”

Sky stifled a giggle. “You’ll learn to love it.”

Night did not reply.

Sky liked to imagine that Night was trying not to laugh herself.