Fallout Equestria: Burdens

Chapter 3- Inquiry

“You can tell me anything. It’s what I’m here for, darling… ”

Briefing… Quack… Crowd…

I pace back and forth, never leaving the side of my bed. Over and over, again, I think back as hard as I can.

Avie… Soup… Departure… Accident… Outpost… Outpost SE-7… Bastards…

I need to look hard– as hard as I can. It’s all I can do right now while my nerves are all jittery and fired up like crazy.

Crack… Descent… Searching… My ears begin to twitch. The itch slowly comes back like gnats swarming to the smell of a festering, open wound. I feel it prickle and grow with intensity the closer I get to what I’m looking for, and with how it’s starting to burn now tells me I’m very close. I feel it there at the forefront of my memory; the answers—maybe the one that will tell me everything.

I bang on the metal headboard to distract from the itch. The chains rattle to remind me they’re still there, and the link that binds the two cuffs together pulls taught every so often. The links chime on top of the banging, the whole ensemble paints gray walls and bars in my head. Both of my hooves are now knocking on the bare metal, and I’m done holding back. A part of me hopes the tremors running up my foreleg will do something for my mind.

*Clang!* *CLANG!* *CLANG!*

I need the momentum if I’m going to catch it. It’s just out of reach– I know it is! It’s stuck and it won’t let go! My anticipations are starting to sour; my craving for closure is going bad, too. As they do, my frustration builds in my joints, my muscles, and my aching head with the itch that grows stronger. I can’t stop, not when I have it!

*CLANG!* *CLANG!* *CLANG!*

My head begins to burn all over. A hot, searing, clawing pain begins to overcome my skull and my thought process. I can’t think of anything else but to bury my head in my hooves and scratch it all like putting out a wildfire. It’s enough to make me scream with how overwhelmingly menacing the sensation feels– the maddening itch that can’t be scratched. Eventually, it dies down and leaves my head tender and sore, but I know what it means. Again, the memory went away.

It got away again… The very memory I hoped would bring me rationale just vanished like feather dust in the wind.

*CLANG!CLANG!CLANG!CLANG!CLANG!*

“FUCK!” I hold my head and squeeze, pulling myself inward while both my hooves try to pull my mane apart down the middle. “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!”

I scream into the whiteness all around me and at myself. These fucking sensations that nag me; the poison of watching all I had hoped to gain from searching turn to the sourest of feelings. I force all of them out in loud screams that keep going for as much air I can take in one breath. It’s still not enough, and I keep going until I can feel my vocal cords want to snap; my lungs want to burst; and my throat peeled red raw from the strain.

My lungs bring in air with snappy, quivering breaths. My head feels light, but hot to the touch with a dull throb. My eyes… they feel puffy and like they burn at the edges of my vision. It hurts to use them, and there’s no way of telling if the white nothing has some responsibility in it.

“Why?” I ask myself, pulling myself into a small ball as best I can to keep myself from collapsing. “Why can’t ya just fucking…get it!”

“Why” is my only company. It’s always been here with me, and knowing it gives it incentive to drive me insane. It knows what I want, and it dangles it just out of reach. Everytime I reach for it, it gets farther away. ‘Ya almost had it!’ I can hear the question taunt into my ear. ‘C’mon! You’ve gotta work harder than that! Where’s that determination? You need it if you want it!’ I growl and hit my head to shut those thoughts up. It’s not fucking fair…

I bite my tongue the moment I feel my eyes welling up. I’ll be begging on my knees before I let myself go like that, again. The growing, pinching pain on my tongue makes me hiss while the welling up goes away. Even though they’re gone, my grip doesn’t let up. The pain grows with biting heat where I feel my teeth sinking into my tongue. Should I just bite it off already? Can I live with the consequences if the pain is real? My stomach sinks with the thought in an instant. I open myself up to see them, and both of them are still there. They shake just barely, and they both feel like they’re on fire now. My eyes follow the chains down to the center, and down the third chain connecting the two of them. I pull them apart with a snarl until the chain is taught, and I do it again and again– holding my breath as I pull on them a third time and keep going. The fore-hooves they cling to feel like they’re about to bend or break; my face feels like it’s going to pop with my lungs expanding in my chest.

Nothing comes out of it but lightheadedness and sore, gasping muscles. I can’t do more but leer at them like it will be the thing to get the links to open up and set me free. Never in my life did I think that I’d actually see physical chains and cuffs bite into my legs like they do. They’re cold, and I can feel them thirsting for blood around their sharp edges.

My wings shift uncomfortably at my sides. It’s a discomfort that makes my whole back coil and shift along with them. Around my chest is an off-white vest, and across my belly are several straps of thick, white canvas or some other material. It’s strong, and that’s all I know about it. There’s no way for me to get it open, and I’m willing to bet that there are some buckles in the hard-to-scratch areas of my back. Unlike the chains, they feel less aggressive and give me a bit of wiggle room to keep my wings feeling like they are there. But chains are still chains– even if they are for a different part of the body, and are made of a different material.

“You need not worry about them. They are only temporary.”

What? I can’t believe it; that was a voice just now, and it was right in front of me. So something is here… something is here… The revelation doesn’t lift my spirits like it should– no thought of rescue makes the tension slide off my shoulders. That voice… Was it a young stallion, or a mare? Or was it two ponies– both stallion and mare talking simultaneously like some hive-mind abomination? Looking up… I’m not even sure if I should be put off by the fact that something’s here with me in this nothingness; that I did not even hear or see it coming prior to hearing it call out to me; or that the thing across from me, sitting at the opposite end of the table, is only a vaguely pony-shaped emptiness that sits in that chair.

All the hair on my body stands. The tingle of fear ruffles my feathers and makes my saliva coagulate and ball up in my throat. There’s just no other way to describe it, other than it’s as if something took a pair of scissors and cut a shape out of the white void– as if to make an implication that something is there.

“How is your head, Ward?”

My scalp immediately begins to burn when the words reach my ears. It’s like the very breath from those words being said was a deliberate blowing onto dying embers laid out across my head. For a minute it’s an intense, burning itch, but it vanishes just as it peaks. It leaves my thoughts feeling smokey and hard to grasp. Not even Pegasus magic can make smoke clouds tangible in my own head. Ironic, and hopeless, at least I can hold my head like it will make things clearer than they frustratingly aren’t…

“Ya know my name…” I say between a hiss, feeling another small crawl of scorching pain make its way across my scalp and reach deep into my hair roots. “Ya know… my name?” They know my name– the only name so few know about…

“I do” The voice states, firm as thunder. “Your eyes look so heavy; have you gotten any sleep since you last woke up? If memory serves, you had broken out in a cold sweat. I am so sorry…”

The tone of voice, the kind that makes me want to think of them like a friend. It hits all the right bells in my head– all the little notes of trusting nostalgia. Except… There are some of those bells that weigh heavy like lead, and play sour notes that I feel all the way into my gut. My stomach twists into a thick knot, and I shift a little in my posture thinking that would ease it, somewhat. It doesn’t go away, and it builds a thought and leaves it at the forefront of my mind. “Do I…know ya from somewhere?”

“Not formally, no. Not at all.”

“Then who are ya? What are ya?” All I have are questions, and that’s not even half of them, or the more concerning ones. As much as I want to scream and demand answers for… all of this; for the emptiness; for the bindings; for the indecency and everything else… What was it our Drill Instructor said about situations like this? “Assess and proceed?” It sounds right to me, but I think that’s as generalized as it can be. I’m not sure if this is an interrogation, or if it’s something else…

I wait for their response…

“Well, to the former and the latter, I am an attache; I am here on behalf of the Grand Aridian High Council, The School of Mysticism, and The Saan-Al’Kimah, herself.”

“The Grand Aridian High Council”… “The School of Mysticism”... “Saan-Al’Kimah”... It’s a lot to unpack, but not too unfamiliar. “The Concert of Aridia?” I sum up all the names under one umbrella.

“Oh, what a pleasant surprise. It seems that your mind has not gone too far, has it? Good sign.”

It’s a thought that I can’t believe I owe the Nag’s neglect to. What else do you do when you’re all alone? With nothing but holotapes and old books— the former, at least. Couldn’t figure the writing for the life of— hold on. “A good sign? What— What’s a good sign?” Is something really that wrong that Grand Aridia’s governing body is listening in? That, alone, gives me a good idea about who the architects of this place are. “What is this place?” I ask on top of my previous question.

“We call it the “White Room”. Think of it like… like a safe pocket-space.”

Is that supposed to be ironic at my expense? I lift my chains, holding them up as long as I need to until she knows what I'm trying to imply. A part of me doesn’t think I need to say anything about it; they’re not hard to miss.

“We were concerned you may have at any moment done… things.”

“Any of them being why you’re over there, and I’m over here?” I ask, pulling the chain.

“If you mean thoughts of ransom with the intent to harm, then no.”

Too casual a tone, and no regard for the fact that they figured I’d do something like that… Something’s missing… “Then why have me in them? In here– this place?” I had to get that question out, but the relief in doing so hasn't come yet. Instead of relieving the stones in my stomach, it’s like their density increased. “Answers. I need answers…” I add.

“The chains are not meant for my safety, but for yours, Ward. It was… is, your safety.”

Since when do chains mean safety? Did a slave ever feel safe with explosive collars around their neck? The chains may not bite as hard as those things are said to, but captivity still means captivity. I can’t help but feel gaslit by those words now that I think about them, again… Son of a bitch…

“We are trying to help you, Ward, but first I need you to trust in my words. Understand that this will not be permanent. The chains will come off. You have my word on that…”

I look back down at the offending item, shifting my forelegs at different angles to see the links twist ever so slightly in place. “How can I trust you?”

“What is it you want? If there is anything I can do for you, name it; if it is within our power and within reason, we will ensure you get it.”

My mind refocuses on those amethyst eyes. “There is a pegasus back— a pilot for the Enclave. I remember her saying that she did runs for y’all as a supplier, or something to that effect… is she safe?” Her eyes, how they searched for an answer in me…How I’ve kept her in the dark… Both these things make my skin feel like it’s freezing while my stomach burns with sinking, superheated stones. “Her name is Aviatrix… Technical Sergeant Aviatrix; tell me if she’s safe.”

The voice doesn’t respond.

The anticipation, the worry, are so thick that it’s like my lungs are caking up with it. I tell myself it’s the wait, but I’m more than sure that it’s dread; dread in the thought that by asking, I’ve put her on the spot. What have I done…

I reach for my talisman, but my chest is bare. It’s too cold. My stomach churns. There’s nothing there–how can nothing be there– how can I lose it?! I had it—had it close, I couldn’t have dropped it! Why–Why is it gone?! Why can’t the tingle in my limbs leave me the fuck alone?! The need to run, turn over, scream– it’s all too much that it’s making my head pound at the sides. I hold my head and coil up to keep myself warm, to shut out the perpetual light. To try to find the faint, warm glow of my mother’s memory within my own body’s darkness.

“We will find her. I promise you. By the time this is over, we may get word.”

My eyes feel hazy and wet. I know what it means, even if I can’t see it. My lungs feel skippy in rhythm, and I hold my breath in hopes that it stops the tears from showing– or any indication of this gets out. They say they’ll find ‘em… “Find ‘em fast–” I say, trying to keep the creakiness out of my voice. Breathe in… Breathe out… Breathe in… I pull myself up from my hooves– scraping away any small indication of tears while doing it. A hard swallow bottles the rest of it up, and I focus on that promise to keep it sealed like wax over a bottleneck.

One more deep breath for ease of mind, I get off my bed and make my way to the table. I take my seat, and take an extra deep breath before looking at the silhouette and ignoring the discomfort in seeing it. “What happens now?”

The figure doesn’t answer immediately.

“Can you tell me… the last thing you remember before waking up here?”

* * * * * *

Crack… Descent… Searching…

“It’s as far as I can get before drawing a blank.” I confess. “It’s like no matter how hard I try, there’s a wall I can’t get over.”

“A wall?”

I nod. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for a while, but…that stuck feeling… It’s like I’ve got nowhere to go.” My ears begin to twitch as an itch makes itself known somewhere in my head. “Everytime I run back my memory, it’s like I can’t just not keep myself from… from immediately remembering waking up in the bed in a cold sweat.”

“Would you say that it is like…like a record skipping?”

“Probably.” I think aloud, reaching for that itch. “Yeah, like a book that’s got its middle chapters ripped out; ya know something’s there, but you’ve got no way of knowing that part of the story.” Yeah… Yeah that’s the best way to put it…

“Interesting way to put it.”

My brows furrow. “It’s just a metaphor.”

“Well, do you feel as if something is intentionally keeping you from looking into these recollections? Or do you feel like something is missing because there is something missing?”

Those words, I’m not sure if it’s the way they were arranged or the angle she’s trying to get me to see, but I feel even more stuck.

“You do not understand. Okay, let’s see…When you recollect these memories, do you feel as if it is at the tip of your tongue where you know these recollections are there, but obscured? Or are you trying to piece together a memory that you feel no longer exists when it should be there?”

I think back to just moments ago… Minutes? Hours? I still can’t tell how long it’s been– it may have been at least thirty minutes, an hour tops. My memories echo those frustrated thoughts and the sounds of me slamming on metal to drown out the chains and shake the memories free. “It’s a tip-of-the-tongue sensation.”

“I see. The memories are indeed there— which means it is unlikely there is deliberate memory tampering via recollectors and memory orbs…Well then…”

My ears flick to a sudden change in the air. There’s no real way to describe it, other than something’s different with the atmosphere. I look down at the table, and my hooves are resting atop a manilla folder. An arbitrary date is written on the file tab, and the words [CONFIDENTIAL] are stamped in red bold letters on its face. Seeing those words almost makes me not want to open it out of subconscious soldier instinct. I can’t tell if it’s some unknown fear of what I might find or if it’s the indoctrination beaten into my head. More than likely, it’s the former…

“Please read it. Confidentiality is no longer needed for the contents of this file.”

I slowly open the folder. The most eye-catching detail is the Enclave’s Coat-of-Arms in the upper left corner of the paper. Everything else is what I come to expect from the formatting of an After Action Report, or an EARR. I fuckin hate these abbreviations– they’re like puns, but more obnoxious. “Where’d ya get this?” I ask, looking up briefly.

“Does anything about this documents’ context seem familiar to you?”

My eyes drop back down to the text. A few words and terms jump out at me— some of them familiar, and others that have me feeling clueless as hell…

‘Outpost SE-7’... I can feel the chill of the desert night and smell things that are burning, and sweating; I can taste the salt and see crooked teeth and bloodshot eyes…

‘ESF- 44122’... Avie’s Vertibuck…

There are several names that I can recognize being mentioned, from Avie, to the Captain, to even Diamond Dust, herself. There’s a basic summary that talks about what the mission entails– “Operation: [REDACTED]”. I didn’t even know our mission had a name to begin with, and there’s no way of telling what it is now with the deep streak of black ink obscuring it. Why would they do that?

“Anything to comment, Ward?”

“This is… was my mission.” I comment. Everything else is what was covered in the morning briefing, worded in the most general description possible… It feels arrogant, or tone deaf, to how Diamond Dust worded it. Just how was this so imperative to our future?

“Does the story it tells match up with any of your recollections?”

The rest of the file’s story… is full of holes. The nag did not skimp on the black ink. Huge paragraphs had been blotted out, save for a few lines that confirm a few things– such as the fact that at least two missing Stormtroopers had been rescued, and the Item of Interest had been recovered. So the mission was a success? “The Captain found what we were sent to find.” I think aloud.

“Do you remember this? Any of this?”

I shake my head. “I don’t remember finding missing teammates, or the thing she wanted us to find. This is all news to me.”

“Where were you amidst this rescue? Do you remember that?”

I take one more look at the file to find mention of me, and nothing. The holes are too big, and the black marker ink goes on for paragraphs at a time. I’ve never seen any paper with this much of it on there– I wouldn’t be surprised if it weighed a bit more from these redactions. What is Diamond Dust keeping– “In the dark…”

“In the dark?”

“I wish it was a dream.” I barely get my words above a whisper. It’s hard to swallow and keep my mouth from drying up for some reason. “It felt like a dream. One minute I find something that the Captain would’ve been either hopeful or fearful to find, and the next…” I look around slowly; everything is still white, but it is still a void… “The next thing I know… I’m nowhere.”

“Like an abyss had taken you?”

I nod slowly. “Like reality vanished and left me behind when my back was turned.” A brief pause and rewind, I hear their words again in my head. It gets me thinking, “How did ya know that?”

“We have kept records of such things— peculiarities; paramagical phenomena…From the sound of it…we call it a ‘Corridor,’ but it was not already there– was it? You did not go towards any bizarre darkness that did not give to the slightest illumination?”

“There was darkness.” I remember. “There was… something else.” That feeling of being stalked, hunted, or… “I couldn’t see it, but it was there. Somehow I knew that something was watching me in that canyon.” It’s vivid in my mind and it goes places– painting an image of what it could have been. No image can come to mind, though, except one word. “I heard it say ‘hello’... from inside my own helmet.” My shoulders become jittery and sensitive, my fur feels like it wants to fly off my skin; a wave of unease crawls up my spine like spindly crawler bugs. I try to throw my hooves around myself to swat those feelings off me, but the chains say I can’t even give myself a hug to calm down.

“Was that it?”

I feel it again beyond the mental block; the urge to get over it, and those answers clawing at the walls on the other side. They rake deep in my head, and the itch they leave is unbearable. “No.” I said, “No, that wasn’t it.” My eyes look to the hoof that dug out the eye in the sand. It tingles with a noxious discomfort as my mind vividly paints the mask sitting on it, and then it falls to show me its ugly side— the malignancy. My hoof feels like it’s touched raw plasma remembering it like that. I shake my head vigorously before my mind begins to paint the malignance growing over my hoof. “I found proof.”

“Proof?”

I twist my hoof hoping it would shake off the lingering, burning tingle. “There was something else. It was there, in the dark.”

“Yes you were just describing that, no?”

“I-I-” I took a deep breath, trying to grab all the pieces strewn about in my headspace.

“Take your time, Ward. It is okay–”

“But, there… in the dark… after finding that stupid mask. It got up when I wasn’t looking…” It’s this one image that’s burned into the walls of my brain, and the sear marks are still tender and red to the touch. I can see its one, cracked, unblinking orange lens staring at me. I close my eyes sometimes, and it’s there. Sometimes it’s closer; sometimes it vanishes; sometimes I see it blink at me, slowly— as if it’s curious. The crackle of glass echoes in my head the longer the image sits there at the forefront of my itching mind.

The dark swallowed me whole; blinded me; deafened me; bound me to crawl. It constructs without mercy, all my senses useless to me; all that I am and what I could feel, see, and taste— useless! There was no way out! My eyes can widen as much as they wanted to take it all in— to try to process, but there was nothing— too much of nothing! It’s suffocating. The silence; the loneliness; the dread; the fear to take one step forward, or backward, or up or down— No way out! None!

And it was there, that stupid mask! That stupid, horrible, corrupted, vile mask of a lost pony! It writhed in the dark like a still-beating heart with a glow that curdled the dark around it! It didn’t illuminate; it didn’t kindle; it loomed like an inanimate reaper that not even the absence of everything could obscure! That place, it wanted me to see it! To watch it take shape into something that makes my head feel like it’s on fire!

There was nothing like it! Nothing else can describe it! That face; that horrible fucking face! What the fuck did I see?!

* * * * * *

“Ward? Ward… Are you listening?”

“Hmm?” The only sound to come out of me. My head lowers, I bite my lip and grimace at myself. I shut my eyes, the image isn’t there; the emotions are absent. The memory… “I lost it, again.” My hooves slam the tableside— Damn it all!

“There is a way we can help you with that. But it cannot be from inside this place.”

I grumble under my breath. Their words aren’t making the fact that I’m no closer to— wait. “What?”

“We have another method to help you. I cannot imagine what beating your projected self might have on your spirit, and as far as we have seen… Yes. Yes, it is all within acceptable– if not satisfactory conditions.”

‘Projected self?’ ‘Spirit?’ ‘Acceptable and satisfactory conditions?’ “Where is all of this coming from?” Asking the question aloud, I can’t help but think back to the E.A.A.R. and their own questions about me knowing what it all said. “Why is any of this important? Why are ya… not like the others?”

Tick…
…tick…
…tick…

“Well… We want answers, too.”

* * * * * *

Harsh hissing lashes at me, blowing cold wet air straight into my face. My eyes, even though closed, sting while my lungs force in large gulps of chilled, somewhat salty air that I cough up almost immediately after. I can’t move my limbs, they’re either really heavy or they’re still locked up at my sides. Trying to talk… my mouth churns out half-baked and mushy sounds that seem loud. It’s as if I’ve never learned to talk since coming out of the womb.

I hear things; muffled sounds. Is that someone talking? I can’t tell with my slow heartbeat pounding at my eardrums, trying lazily to sync with the low humdrum buzzing permeating everything. My eyes still won’t open on their own.

A tearing, retreating pain erupts with vicious gusto from the center of my chest. It turned the buzzing into a high-pitched shrill in my ears and forced both my mouth and eyes open as wide as they both can. My heartbeat’s pounding fast, now, and I can feel air escaping from my mouth. Am I screaming? I can’t hear it. Too taxing to do anything…

Something wraps itself around my body and pulls on me till I’m upright. My head wants to go down with my chin digging deep into myself, but something else pulls it up and away.

My eyelids, I feel them prying open. The cold air comes through the small cracks to dry them, and they clam shut. Eventually, they open and show a half-lidded, fuzzy picture. A shape is in front of me; I can’t tell who or what it is. Something brushes my face, gently, like what a mother may do to a foal coming out of the shower.

The ringing subsides slowly, and I can hear the noises become less fuzzy and more defined. A calm, warm voice reaches my ears; oddly familiar. “Welcome, Ward. Welcome to the mountain.”

* * * * * *

A deep sharp breath jumpstarts my senses and pops my eyelids open. No screams, no cold sweat; no need to run, hide or fly; there’s just an air of calm; lethargy in my joints and in my bones; and a moaning headache. I fight those heavy chains keeping me weighed down to pull myself up—slowly, as insisted by my grouch of a gut that’s hating me right now. Every part of me that bends croaks like a grandma’s wooden rocking chair, even my eyes as they try to adjust the picture. It’s dark, at first, but the smell of burning wax and a faint light catches my attention. Following it, a glow with great intensity blasts my eyes with gouging white light. I turn away sharply from it, shouting and groaning with my face buried in my hooves.

The burning fades, and dread slowly looms over me like the reaper. A chill rattles my spine and ruffles my wings, taking in the moment. Just what is the moment? What happened? Where am I? Am I still in chai— The questions trigger the vaguest memories and the faintest feelings. The weight on my hooves, the chains that bound them. Will I see them if I take my hooves away from my eyes? Do I want to know if this is another abstraction to torment me? Do I want to find out? Will that be what I’ll find when I look? I won’t know until I look— that much is certain. But… Do I want to? Can I bear the sinking feeling any longer?

I pull away from my hooves to see them, to find…nothing. I keep twisting them around to find any chain bite; any indication that I ever had them, but there’s nothing to tell me I ever did. My wings! They open instinctively, without restriction. I can feel every little breeze through the fibers of my feathers. A quick glance over my shoulder and an outstretched wing shows that nothing is out of place. I can faintly see the hidden baby blue under-feathers, nestled in among the dark cerulean ones. Everything’s here… I want to believe it, but something isn’t right. It’s like… like what those Enclave mural artists show they’re going through when they find that there’s something off between what they’ve made and what looks right in their head. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it’s how I know my legs are skinnier than I’m used to.

The feeling turns into a mild compulsion to check everything about me. It can’t just be my hooves and legs right? The urge to check makes me throw the bed cover off me. I’m completely indecent, but that pang of embarrassment falls apart like sand when my focus shifts to my bare, empty, naked chest. Where are you? You have to be here! You’re here somewhere— you have to be! I just need more—

The light source brightens. Another chill brushes by me then creep back like spiders to see my own shadow stretching and migrating slightly as the space around me is bathed in a yellowish-white light that’s right on top of me.

My gaze shifts from my shadow to the source. It’s… it’s like the world’s tiniest sun. Hurts to look at, but it isn’t warm. What are you? It has to be magic— there’s no other explanation. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen it, and it’s just a glowing ball of light. In an odd way, it’s alluring; mysterious. Who is the caster?

There’s a mechanical hiss from in front of me, and there’s light in the shape of a door. Within the frame is a silhouette, but the floating globe of light zooms over to quickly dispel the obscuring shadow. It all peels away, clearly showing a mare covered in stripes from ear tip to hock. That and the mohawk mane are dead giveaways, but I never expected to see a Zebra whose crest is all tied braids and as long as a pony’s.

She walks in, and the door closes behind her. The glowball circles around and follows at her side. “Hold on.” She tells me as she takes a hoof to the light, brings it close to her snout, and then lets it up. Now the bulb grows brighter than it already was, illuminating the whole room as it sits suspended like the noon sun. This is a sparsely decorated room; it has an iota of grim familiarity— how empty the walls are…“That is better, don’t you think so?” That voice sounds as warm as the bulb outta be projecting, radiating comfort the room lacks. She sounds like—

I’m still fucking indecent!

Anxiety racks my mind, constricts my joints, and makes my wings clamp shut. There’s no time to think about anything else, but to cover myself as best I can with the thin sheets. This zebra mare just walks in without warning or permission and all of me down there was still exposed!

She stops mid-walk and covers her mouth. “Excuse me. I was not interrupting anything, was I?”

What is that supposed to– Oh… Oh! Hrm… Should I be feeling bashful? Flabbergasted? Or insulted by the implication in that question? “Wh–” An unstoppable urge to cough cuts my words short. My vocal cords feel grainy, and my stomach feels like it’s been pounded in with a hammer; I feel how sore and tense it is from the small little coughs. Feels like how I felt after a physical, but bordering on worse.

“Try not to talk too much.” She warns gently. “You have not beaten pneumasthenia, yet.” ‘New–mass–theenie–what?’ “Oh, you have not touched your fruit. No appetite? Or perhaps neither are your favorites?” Fruit? My eyes pan right, there on a nightstand-looking piece of furniture is a brown bowl full of colorful fruits.

“I-I-I… had no–” The cough keeps me from saying anything. I bang my chest, partly out of frustration, and because I don’t want to suffocate.

“Just breathe.” She urges me, gently. “Breathe; in through the nose, out through the mouth. Relax while I get your drink.”

In through the nose, out through the mouth…

…in through the nose, out the mouth…

My lungs untangle, but my throat is still gritty. I’m just realizing— how labor-intensive it is to breathe naturally. I’m still taking in as much air as I can, but my lungs feel like they want to collapse every once and a while.

Another burst of short coughs, I close my eyes to ride it out and breathe in when the opportunity comes. Hmm? The air is a little different. It smells aromatic, nutty, hot, and steamy. My eyes open and I find a small elegant cup waiting for me in a brown hoof under my nose. I gently take the cup and look at its contents. It’s a black liquid that peeks at me through a brown cover of foam bubbles. The smell from before is much stronger, and much more burnt— so much so that it makes my face scrunch up a little.

“Be careful, it is hot.” The Zebra warns. I look at her at my bedside, and she’s gently holding a small cup of her own in the frog of her hoof. She brings it to her mouth and takes a generous, but smooth sip from it. A look of satisfaction, and maybe pride, passes over her face before her amber-orange eyes meet my vermillion.

She is a Zebra, right? The gold is there— it’s on her head like a diadem with ornate, jeweled chains at the sides; in the bands holding her long braided crest over her shoulder. But… I thought they were described as monotone. She’s brown, cream, and white. And those clothes aren’t like the old artistic depictions. I don’t think any artist can put all those complex shapes and patterns into an illustration— there’s just no way. Who in their right mind thought that kaleidoscope patterns needed to be on loose robes? Just why—what does that even do for anyone but induce a seizure or trick the mind? Because I swear the longer I look at them, the more they move—

“Your drink, Ward.” Her voice snaps me out of it. My eyes go back to staring at her, and they catch one of her hooves under that garb gesturing to the cup still in my hooves. “Please, do not let it get cold.”

I tell myself I was killing time, but… this is the first time I’ve ever seen one of her kind. I wish I could feel that thrill, but everything feels so null; so distant. It was a long time ago when I had that kind of wonder. But right now, the only wonder I have is what’s in my cup.

Gently, I bring it to my lips and stare at the contents the whole way through. It’s hot— she was right about that, and damn it’s foamy. That blanket of bubbles dissipates at the slightest, shaky blow from my lips. All those smells from earlier are so much stronger than I thought— much stronger than any kind of coffee I’ve smelled. The steam; the smells they carry; I do feel something like a breath of fresh air blowing through to every tip of my being.

One small sip.

I grimace, nearly choke on it— spasm, even; Acrid, pungent, harsher than the grit in a drill sergeant’s voice; all those adjectives and more falls short of the absurdly bitter taste of this gritty cup of foamy dirt water. “Fuck!”

I set the cup down with haste, smacking my lips and hating it every time. Fuck me, it’s like putting out a fire with turpentine! Where’s the fucking fruit? I find it where it was last left, pluck several grapes and eat. They don’t work– damn it! How about an orange? I find the biggest wedge and take it in whole. My mouth feels fuzzy and detached from taste. Everything tastes like sand…

“I’m sorry you did not like it.” The Zebra mare apologizes.

No matter how hard I try, the stuff always tasted like shit– even on a good day. I don’t know if it’s the bitterness or the fact that what makes it looks like a bunch of processed dirt, but I just can’t ever recall liking it; even if it was just colored hot water. I cleared my throat, sticking my tongue out with disgust when that revived the coffee taste at the back of my throat. “I– Hot water, next time.”

My voice came back. I really don’t want to give credit to the coffee. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was the fruit’s juices. Still, I’m bummed that I couldn’t taste any of that fruit— genuine, fresh fruit.

“I see. Okay.” She says, then clears her throat. “I wish introductions could have gone a little smoother, but we will press on. My name is Stagona; Stagona Sophia. By any chance, do you remember me?”

Stagona… Stagona…Soo–phi–a? Aside from the strange way that name comes out of her mouth, my memory’s straddling on a tightrope of uncertainty. “I can’t say I have.” Seriously, what the fuck kind of name is “Sophia” or “Stagona”; “Stagona Sophia?”

“But we talked before— in the White Room, as a matter of fact.”

There wasn’t any— hold on. “You’re the guest? That silhouette thing?”

She cocked her head slightly with a raised brow, “Silhouette?”

I nod. “Yeah. Spoke with two voices, I think— if I remember it right. Couldn’t tell which was which– but now I know you’re a mare and not some young colt.”

“Two voices?” Her gaze narrowed with what I assume is a firm thinking face.“ An interesting way to put it. Unusual, even. So I sounded like a mare and stallion?”

“Mare, filly, stallion, colt– could’ve been any of them, or all of them, all at once. Why does that matter?”

“It is just unusual. I did not think that voice would be affected when speaking through it, and it certainly warrants more study.” She pauses to sip from her own cup of coffee, and my eyes wander along her exposed brown stripes. I can see why those books call them “exotic”; the strange patterns that run the length of her body are almost like art in their own right— coming together to make symmetrical shapes that I’d never think a coat can do. They’re complex, but much easier to look at compared to the patterns on her indigo coat-thing. It’s a shock to the system to follow the stripes and see it disappear behind that nauseating pattern of geometry when she pulls it back.

“Anyways,” she says as she finishes her cup and sets it down. “Do you need me to go over anything before we get started? Do you remember the last thing we talked about before you woke up here?”

I take a cursory glance around this place. “Where…am I now?”

“The Aridian Mountain Complex.” She explains. “This is a spare rest chamber near our Observational Studies Wing.”

“ ‘Our’? ”

“The School of Mysticism.”

Right… That’s one question down, and a mountain to go. “How long have I been out?”

“Not too long. At least a full two days and a half– your cognition was still… reacclimating. We would check up on you and make sure all the necessities were taken care of. Your mind may still be a little foggy, but it will come back. Rest assured. Anyways, I promise you more explanations in the very near future.” She dispels the quick silence. It felt like it went on for longer. “For now, we must get ready.”

“Ready?”

She nods. “Yes. I told you about a solution to help you with your memory issue. Do you remember? ” She sets her coffee cup out of the way and flips her glitzy cape-thing; I swear there was a name for those things. Her hoof reaches in and she pulls out a sizable, round pouch and sets it on the table. The little knot comes undone quickly to unveil a smooth, spherical, dark amber rock. “Do you know what this is?” She asks. I shake my head, knowing damn well that it isn’t an oversized black opal. “The Aridians call it a ‘gleaning stone.’ This is what will help with that memory block you have.”

I stare at the stone, and immediately get crystal ball vibes from it. It looks like it could fit completely within the frogs of my hooves. “How will a stone help me up here?”

“Well to put it as simply as I can,” she takes a deep breath and gently glides a hoof across its shiny surface. “This stone, used by Remembrancers, will guide the both of us through your recollections until we find—”

“‘Both of us’?”

She nods, “Yes, the both of us. It is the only way.”

My ears fold back, and my wings pull tight into my sides. I grimace, “Says who?”

“You must understand, Ward, that this is an invasive process.” She explains, gentle-like. “I cannot sugarcoat it, and I would rather not lie to you. If there were another way, we would have presented it.” I know the memories are in there somewhere, but I can’t get to them for some reason. This thing– if it can do it, then it’s great. Still, a part of me can’t be certain that I’d completely let myself be compromised to that degree. It’s Ministry of Morale levels of privacy violations.

“Can’t I just do it on my own?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I am sorry, but it is a process that requires two or more parties. One cannot do it alone, and we could not do it back in the White Room with what it was and what could have happened or not.”

I look down from her with a snort. How do I know this isn’t some excuse to get a hold of my weaknesses? To see my most private moments? My most humiliating moments? To know what matters to me and use that to my advantage? I just met this Zebra, and they’re already wanting to get into my head further than I’d let any other quack!

“Ward,” She calls out. “Ward, I understand. Just know that we want to help and that we provide the only options we know. The last thing we want is to make you uncomfortable, but this must be done. If at any moment, you are too uncomfortable with my questions— or with what you want to show me, you can always say you want to move on.”

I want to move on from this, more than anything; this being here, this waking up in different places–I just want my talisman… I want... “Is Avi–atrix— Is Aviatrix okay?”

“She is fine.”

I look up, “She is?”

“Yes.” The pressure in my chest releases, and I breathe a deep sigh of relief. It’s like my heart can rest a little easier– if just a little. “Where is she?”

“You need not worry, Ward. You two will see each other, as soon as we proceed with current matters.” She tells me, confidently yet gently. “I do not mean to spoil the mood, but I promise you more when we are done here. Remember?”

I do, and it has me looking at the dark amber rock. “Will it hurt?” I ask.

“Painless.” She responds.

Avie is safe, and that brings me more comfort than I could hope for. Still, what gnaws at me is still somewhere there in the back of my mind. It’s there, somewhere, and it’s something I still cannot ignore. Avie might be safe, but I still need to know what happened for her sake. “Confidential? My memories, I mean.” I ask.

She nods.

One more cursory glance at the stone’s face. “When do we start?”

“When you are ready.”