The carriage doors rattled and writhed on their rusted bolts, straining against the metal restraints that kept them pinned open. Dark and vibrant countryside rushed by the small opening, illuminated in the silver luminescence of a crescent moon. The wind tugged and pulled at Flare’s clothing like a nagging partner hoping for intimacy, and she crawled away from the door with a weary sigh. She settled back into the far corner, pulling a beaten up brown jacket around her shoulders as she propped herself up against the metal walls of the train carriage.
“Aren’t you Thestrals meant to enjoy the nighttime?” her newly found companion asked. A skinny grey unicorn, with a shaggy cut mane that sprouted from his head like tufts of long grass in an abandoned meadow. He looked up from the beaten up guitar he was fiddling away with, his green eyes bright despite the dark circles underneath them.
She’d met him only a few days ago, when she’d been checking out the train yards for an acceptable ride out of town. They’d shared what little food and water they had between them, and, having let her caring nature get the better of her, she reluctantly agreed to take the younger stallion under her wing. From their conversations, she’d quickly ascertained he wouldn’t last a week without someone looking out for him, and in the losing game of cards she’d been playing with the universe, she’d seemingly been dealt another set of duds.
“It’s the cold I can do without, Ari” She replied through chattering teeth. The mare noted with queer curiosity how rough her reply sounded, as if her throat were made out of sandpaper. She fumbled around in her jacket pocket, removing a crumpled packet of cigarettes. Flipping the cardboard lid, she clicked her tongue in disappointment as only a single, upturned cigarette was to be found.
“Here,” Ari held his own pack of cigarettes in an outstretched hoof. She took it from him, flashing a quick smile and a word of thanks. The cigarette met fire on her lips and she inhaled deeply, the smoke pluming like fresh bushed snow off a pavement. She tossed the packet back to him, and he nodded in acknowledgement, quickly returning to his instrument. He produced sporadic notes, humming quietly beneath the racket of the train carriage as he searched for a rhythm or melody that seemed worthwhile to him.
Despite his nieaveté, he did have some uses. And, as much as she hated to admit it to herself, she’d enjoyed having him around these few days. However, she couldn’t help wondering why he’d asked to tag along with her. They were strangers. He’d just shown up that day, guitar slung over his back and weighed down with two heavy saddle bags at either flank, asking her if she had a light. The question nagged and pulled at the corners of her mind, not quite letting her settle down for the sleep she desperately needed.
She regarded him with curiosity in her eyes, watching intently as he continued to idly pluck at the guitar, the space between them occasionally lighting up with a burst of green mana as he scribbled down notes into a little brown notebook. She flicked the ash from her cigarette to one side, pulling her jacket closer around her body. She’d grown accustomed to silence, the months spent backpacking and hitching rides on her own having well acclimatized her to the sounds of whichever environment she found herself in.
The silence she felt with Ari, her new companion, however? It was deafening.
“Why are you here?” Flare blurted out, finding the words leaving her mouth before she realized what she was doing. She took another long drag from the cigarette resting in the corner of her mouth, and idly hoped that Ari hadn’t heard her over the din of the train.
However, hope was a poor bedfellow, as she had already learned, and the stallion lifted his head up in surprise. He pressed a hoof against the vibrating strings to silence them, tilting his head to one side.
“What do you mean?” He asked, muzzle scrunching in confusion.
Flare bit her lip and sighed internally, lifting up a hoof to gesture around them. “Here,” She said, removing the cigarette from her mouth to speak clearly. “You’re running away from home, right?” She guessed she was somewhere in the ballpark as she saw Ari flinch, his body sinking into itself as his shoulders slumped.
“I’m not running away,” he muttered under his breath, reaching over to one side to place his guitar onto the empty floorboards next to him. He dragged his knees up to his chest, glancing up at Flare with those large, green eyes. “There’s nothing to go back to.” He finished, suddenly seeming much smaller in stature than before.
“I’m sorry,” Flare spoke softly from the opposite end of the carriage. Darkness filled the small space they shared, and she could only just make out the stallions outline against the surrounding void. “I shouldn’t have asked, I was just… curious, I suppose.”
There was a silence spanning far longer than Flare cared to figure out, before Ari finally spoke again.
“Have you…” Ari began, his voice straining and shaking before he found his confidence again. “Have you ever thrown something away, only to realize later that you needed it?”
Flare stifled a light chuckle with an exhale. “My old sleeping bag,” She flicked the cigarette butt out of the carriage doors. “I miss it sometimes. It kept me warm on nights like these.” She refocused her gaze on Ari. “How about you?”
“I used to have this small glass vial filled with sand,” he chuckled, kicking his leg out to stretch. “It was from a river that’s very important to me.”
“You can always go back some day,” Flare commented with a soft smile.
“Not in the way that I want to.” Ari quickly retorted, releasing a long and frustrated sigh. “Recovery is… difficult.” He added, almost like an afterthought, lighting a cigarette of his own before offering one to Flare.
“How long?” Flare murmured, her mind filling in the blanks as the lighter spat out sparks into the darkness.
“One month down.” The stallion replied, taking another long drag.
“And then an entire lifetime,” Flare chuckled darkly, shifting her body to alleviate the pins and needles spreading through her limbs.
“It’s like…” Ari sighed, a growing frustration in his voice. “I feel like I’ve just gotten out of a relationship with an abusive partner. Like, some combination of the best sex I’ve ever had, but he’d take all my money, trash my house, leave me bruised and bleeding, but… but no matter how bad it got, I’d always go back to him.”
“I understand.” Flare replied, keeping her gaze locked on Ari’s faint outline. Part of her was surprised by Ari’s sudden willingness to open up to her, so she chose her next words carefully. “One of the good things about sobering up is realizing how… nice the world can be, once you decide you want to put the work in. You can rediscover all those things you’d been blind to,” She smiled knowingly at the stallion.
Ari gestured to his guitar with an upturned lip, exhaling through his nose.
“However,” she paused to take a quick drag, before continuing. “You’ve also gotta’ come to terms with all the horrible shit you’ve done,” A frown. “And at least for me, part of that was realizing that a lot of it was my fault.”
“You were sick.” Ari replied, his face obscured by cigarette smoke and darkness. It seemed as if he were making a statement of fact, but his tone betrayed the uncertainty in his words.
Flare chuckled and shook her head. “You’re not wrong, Ari, but it took me far too long to admit that I welcomed the sickness, that it was part of me.” She sighed. “I didn’t fight it that hard.”
Ari opened his mouth to reply, but Flare continued. “Getting sober was one of the best things I’ve done, and I am proud of myself for sticking it out, but it came at the cost of admitting to things that I didn’t want anypony else to know.” She blew cigarette smoke out between her teeth, eyes focused on the night sky. “It’s hard to make amends when none of your friends will return your calls.”
Another stretch of silence. The pair sat on opposite ends of the carriage, gazing out across the twilight landscape as it whirled past them. If she squinted hard enough, Flare was able to make out various constellations in the night sky. She thought she spotted a shooting star, streaking across the dark canvas of night, but shook her head with amusement upon the realization that it was just a satellite. She concluded that it probably wasn’t the best idea to make wishes on space hardware.
It was Ari who broke the silence once again.
“How do you deal with the guilt?” He asked, inhaling the last few puffs from his cigarette.
Flare’s ears picked up, and she chewed her bottom lip as she considered his question. “Try to make a change?” She began, trying not to think too hard about the words that flowed from her mouth. “You can’t run from who you are, or what you’ve done, You’re always going to be the same pony, no matter how much distance you cover. And, as much as it sucks to realize, you have no say over whether the ponies you left behind will forgive you.” A pause. “So the only thing you can do is try to own that. Try to live a better life, make changes where you can.”
“I doubt anyone I’ve left behind would be interested in hearing my side of things.” Ari commented sadly, glancing down at his hooves.
“Unfortunately, that’s not something which you can control, Ari,” Flare replied, trying her best to be soft and reassuring. She had the vague thought rattling around in her head of moving across the carriage to embrace the stallion, but she remained glued to her spot. “At a certain point, it’s not about you. You can only really control what you choose to do from this moment onwards.”
She frowned to herself, perhaps realizing that her words had been too harsh.
“Look, I won’t force you to open up to me all in one night, okay?” She began, letting her jacket fall from her shoulders. The wind bit and nipped at her fur. It reminded her that she was still alive. “What happened in the past is done. What matters now is that you have the chance, the freedom, to do something different.”
Flare waited with baited breath as Ari remained still for several moments, before finally speaking. “I never thought freedom would be this…” Ari trailed off, clicking his tongue as he struggled to think of the word he wanted to use.
“Beautiful? Terrible? Lonely?” Flare offered him a toothy, fang filled smirk, though she doubted he could see it in the gloom.
“Shit.” Ari eventually landed on his target with a chuckle.
“That’s life,” Flare smirked again, stifling a yawn as she retrieved a blanket from her pack. “Here,” She threw it towards Ari, who caught it in a brilliant flash of green mana. “Can’t have you freezing to death.”
“Won’t you be too cold without it?” He asked quietly, but she brushed him off with a good natured smile.
“I’ve got my jacket,” she replied, bunching it up about her body once again. She added, “I’ll just set the train on fire if it gets too cold.”
“Please don’t,” he giggled, ending in a yawn, resting his head against his pack as a makeshift pillow. He wrapped the blanket around his body. “Thank you,” he added, barely above a whisper.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Ari,'' Flare whispered back, settling herself back into the corner.
She was about to settle down to sleep, before Ari mumbled one last thing. “You deserve to feel good too, Flare,”
Flare smiled to herself, feeling quite glad that there was no need to reply to the half awake Ari. Soon enough, the only sounds to be heard were the rattling of the train, the howling wind, and Ari’s soft snoring from across the carriage.
Flare closed her eyes and relaxed. She was going to wake up tomorrow.
No matter what it took.