An aged spruce ceiling holds your exhausted eyes.

The tinge of an aching burn nibbles at their edges. You rub away at them with your good arm, but the ache deepens, tormenting you almost as much as the throbbing in your other shoulder. You haphazardly exhale through your nostrils, and the absence of air in your lungs alone is almost enough to knock you out cold again. With whatever strength you have left, though, you fight to stay awake - you’ve already slept most of the day away, and it won’t do to be so vulnerable.

Even though Kalliope swore up and down that you were safe in the annex above the restaurant, you can’t help but feel otherwise. Realizing that your bandages have become more crimson than white doesn’t help much with the anxiety, but it’s something. You’ve long since shucked your old worker’s uniform, too, which got rid of that strangely dank smell.

Owing to that creeping fear of being found out, you’re huddled away on the floor in the corner of a spare bedroom, as far as you can possibly extricate yourself from an oddly placed skylight. The crepuscular rays of the evening sun being cast onto the wooden floorboards glint off of lilting dust, a veritable shower of sparks playing around in the stale glow.

Beside you, Hearth still slumbers, blissfully unaware of the current predicament that befalls the two of you. Her chest rises and falls at a rate that you’re not altogether comfortable with; every couple minutes or so, you can’t help but press two fingers against her jugular to check for a pulse. It’s always there, but the uneasiness never leaves.

You turn to look at her, beholding every bruise, mark, and laceration her body bears. Red and purple cruelty leap out at you, even from under her thick winter coat. Almost every inch of her that you can see is covered in torturous welts and gashes. Perhaps the most disheartening part of her that your eyes meander over, though, is her face.

She’s got one hell of a black eye, and while the bruising isn’t quite enough to hinder her sight, it still looks swollen to high hell. Her bottom lip is busted in two places, and there’s some additional, lighter bruising on her right cheek as well. Couple that with the black eye, and you’ve got clear-cut evidence that they were beating her, most likely repeatedly. So hard, apparently, that it had left lacerations in her skin. Dried blood matts her fur here and there, mostly near the areas where she had been struck.

Her breathing hitches for a moment, and her forehooves twitch this way and that. For a second, you think she’s about to wake up, and your own breath gets caught in your throat. After a few tense moments, though, she returns to stillness, her breathing settled.

Your back hits the wall with a thud as you sigh in defeat. How potent was that fucking spell…?

“Won’t do ya any good to keep checkin’ ‘er over like that,” Pal says softly, bedbound on the opposite end of the room.

“I can’t help it,” you reply. “She’s been out for like, what, twenty hours or something now?”

He shrugs his shoulders as he casts his gaze to the skylight.

“I’m probably not the best person t’ ask,” he says flatly. “But yeah, somethin’ like that.”

Oh, shit… right.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh…” you sputter.

“Nah, it’s fine. Was just tryin’ t’ joke around, is all.”

His fallen expression betrays how he really feels. You opt not to press it any further; the last thing you’d wanna do is upset him.

“Your wife said she might have something that could help, didn’t she?”

The mention of Kalliope seems to bring him out of his stupor for the time being. While he still isn’t quite as chipper as he was before he had the news dropped on him, it’s a marked improvement.

“Mhm. She was the one who used t’ patch us all up whenever we got into trouble.”

His spectral eyes comb over Hearth’s sleeping form for a moment before he continues.

“She’ll be able t’ take care o’ Hearth’s regular injuries, but I dunno if we got anything geared toward that sleep stuff she’s got goin’ on.”

“What do we do if she doesn’t?” you ask.

“Well,” Pal sighs. “We got two options in that case - wait it out, or get some outside help. I might know a guy, but a lot can change over eight years.”

The room falls silent for a time, the muted goings-on of the restaurant below filling the air with some merciful form of noise.

Kalliope said she’d be closing early today, but you aren’t sure just when that’ll be. There’s a shelf nearby with some books atop it that might help you kill some time, but you wouldn’t dare partake without asking her permission first. Guest’s manners, and all that. Instead, you broach whatever you can grasp for discussion.

“You excited to be with your family again?”

He lights up like a christmas tree, the spectral pinpricks in his eye sockets brightening rapidly.

“Oh, more than ever,” he muses, sitting upright as he turns to face you. “Kal ain’t aged a day, you know that? Twelve years, and she still belongs in royal paintings.”

He gestures to himself, chortling.

“Guess I hit the wall, though, huh?”

You can’t help but chuckle, even if it’s a bit forced. How the hell can he improve his mood so fast…?

“Seems like you’re taking it pretty well.”

“I’m tryin’,” he sighs again. “I just have to keep my head up. It’ll pass eventually.”

He shrugs as he rises from the bed, making his way over to your corner.

“I mean, I’m here now, ain’t I?”

You nod, pausing a moment to consider your next words. Really, though, can you even say anything of significance? His situation is so alien to anything you’ve been through - without experience to back your words, they’ll certainly fall flat.

“Yeah, you are.”

Filler it is, then.

As he takes his seat on the other side of Hearth, he nods, an air of appreciation about his skeletal features.

“Yeah… Not gonna waste that.”

His musings over, he holds your gaze.

“How ‘bout you, ‘non? You holdin’ up okay?”

You search his features, eager to pick up on any sort of sarcasm. There isn’t any.

“I mean… not really.”

He gestures to the well-kept room around you with wide arms, letting them slap the top of his knees as they come back down.

“Better than yesterday, though, isn’t it?” he asks, nodding along as if to influence your answer.

“We’re being hunted, man,” you almost spit. “We went from being neck deep in shit, to being chest deep. Push comes to shove, it’s still shit.”

“Sure, sure,” he placates, hands up in mock surrender. “Won’t argue with ya there, but you’re thinkin’ about it all wrong.”

“How?” you ask incredulously.

He deadpans as he leans in toward you.

“Weren’t you gonna be that lil’ witch’s sex slave?”

“Yeah?”

“I haven’t known ya long, but I’m willin’ to bet you wouldn’t have taken well to that gig. No freedom, no autonomy, all that.”

You let the back of your head gently hit the wall.

“…Yeah.”

“Well, there ya go,” he says. “Would I rather not be bathin’ in shit? ‘Course. But if I gotta, then I’d much rather be up to my chest than my neck. Little stuff, Anon.”

Little stuff.

You struggle to find the blissful ignorance needed to call any of what’s happened to you “little.”

Regardless, you’ve no strength or energy to argue. In any case, doing so would no doubt put your soul ill at ease, shooting down his unflinching optimism like that.

“…Guess so.”

“Chin up, Anon,” he encourages, patting your knee like a wizened old man. “I got a good feelin’ about all this.”

Your heart stirs, rattling against its cage. You want to believe he’s right, despite all sense telling you otherwise. Who knows? Maybe an assload of good news and a miracle or two are right around the corner.

Before you can play the party pooper any longer, you hear the telltale thud of a distant trap door being shut tightly. Your gaze locks onto the bedroom door, beyond which lies someone on the approach.

Before long, you feel the heft behind each footfall in the trembling floorboards beneath you. As they reach the door, you involuntarily tense. Silence reigns over the unsteady air, broken only by Hearth’s blissful exhales. The sunset seeping in through the bottom of the door curls around two thin shadows that shuffle ever so gently, the wood straining under their mass.

The door to the room doesn’t have a lock, so you aren’t sure why she’s just-

“You boys alright?” a familiar velvety tone asks as the door is gently pushed wide.

Kalliope stands at the precipice, the glow cast inside from a hallway window shrouding her in the waning daylight. She looks much the same as she did earlier, albeit more disheveled after a long day of work. Her eyes seem vacant, despite her gentle smile’s best attempts to achieve a form of normalcy. You’re certain no one in the room blames her - today is likely the strangest day she’s had in just over a decade.

“Better, now that you’re here,” Pal replies, rising to meet her.

He crosses the room, arms spread wide as she meets him halfway in an embrace. She leans into it, her lingering apprehension pushed firmly away by her devotion to her husband.

“Hey, love,” she exhales, gently swaying as they both refuse to let go.

“Hey, sweet thing,” he softly replies, hugging her tighter for a moment before finally letting go. “Work went well?”

“Mostly. It was… well, it was hard to focus.”

“Can’t stop thinkin’ ‘bout me even when I’m like this, eh?” Pal jests, flexing his humeri.

“Don’t push your luck,” she flirts back, playfully flicking his shoulder. “Where’s our sleeping beauty?”

You shuffle away from the wall, revealing Hearth’s slumbering form to her. Kalliope’s eyes travel over every crest and trough, staying a while on bluish brutalities.

“Goodness…” she whispers sharply, an inhale whistling through her teeth.

“Can you help her?” you choke out, taken aback by the timid mutter that disguises itself as your voice.

“I can patch her up, for sure,” she says as she closes the distance between the two of them. “As far as waking her up, though, the first aid cabinet ain't really geared for that.”

She gently slips her hands underneath Hearth, taking special care to keep her head steady as she cradles her against her chest.

“Would ya mind getting the kit for me, babe?” she asks, half-turned toward Pal as she carries Hearth over to the bed.

“Same place as always?” he asks, halfway out of the room already.

“Same place.”

“Sweet. Be right back, hon!”

A half-second later, he’s rounded the doorframe, humming to himself as he plods off on his mission. You rise to your feet as Kalliope sets Hearth down on the bed, the sheets beneath her bunching slightly around the relative shape of her body.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Kalliope says, turning to you at last. “It’s been so long, and the last few to try that were City Watch in disguise, so I just…”

She trails off into silence, avoiding your gaze.

You shake your head, wincing as you wave her off with your bad arm.

“Don’t worry about it. You’ve got some crazy grip strength, though. Shit.”

She chuckles, offering you a polite smile as she gestures to herself.

“Comes with the territory. They get you, too?”

She points at your wrapped shoulder, your damp bandages tugging against your tender skin as if they were reacting to her scrutiny.

“Yeah,” you mutter, a heady fog surrounding your words. “Yeah, while we were, ah… getting out.”

“I can take a look at it after I’m done with her, if you want.”

You nod, a sting of appreciating rocketing down from the wound.

“Thank you.”

You meander over to the other side of the bed, observing Kalliope as she leans over Hearth, parting her fur this way and that, experienced hands refusing to waste any time.

“Poor thing,” she mused, slicking Hearth’s fur back down as she straightened up. “Must’ve been in a lot of pain, carrying on like this.”

“If she was, she’s good at hiding it.”

Kalliope hums her acknowledgement as she bends down to brush a few strands of hair out of Hearth’s eyes.

“She a friend of yours?”

You nod.

“Yeah. I mean, we just met yesterday, but I’d like to think so.”

She nods in return, now focused entirely on you.

“Pal told me a little bit about what happened before I went off to work. I knew Her Children were prone to overstepping, but I didn’t think they’d move against an entire country.”

Before you can think rationally, your questions spill forth as you inch toward the bed in anxious anticipation.

“Do you have any idea where Equestria is? Where it could be, even?”

She shakes her head.

“Today’s the first I’ve heard of it,” she replies, tone lowered in empathy. “That’s where you’re from, right?”

“Both of us, yeah.”

The desperation in your gut simmers.

“Look, does… does anyone know where it is? I mean, obviously, they do, but that’s off the table.”

She takes a second to think, but it amounts to the same denial you’re starting to dread.

“Most of the people living in Khodasa have never even seen the outside of the walls,” she explains. “Even the state-mandated traders only ever go as far as the outer settlements.”

You exhale in defeat as your palm drags itself up your face, fingers pinching the bridge of your nose.

“There aren’t any people coming in from further out? None at all?”

“Not in my lifetime, no. Any farther out than the settlements, and the ambient climate gets too rough to travel through.”

Your hand falls from your face, dangling precariously at your side. Your index and thumb twitch ever so slightly, pads gently treading against each other.

Is this some kind of cruel joke? Punishment for some morally bankrupt thing you did at some point in your life?

The tumult in your stomach rises to your chest.

You fill your lungs with the house’s still air, nostrils stinging from the indifferent cold. Your palms find their home on the back of your head as you zone out, eyes wandering across the wooden beams above you.

“…What do we even do?”

The hushed words leave an awful tang on your lips, tasting of resignation.

“The only thing you should be focusing on right now is recovering and keeping a low profile,” Kalliope replies, her guidance gently offered. “They’ll be looking for you three soon - if they ain't already started.”

“Would they think to look here?” you worriedly ask, gently letting your arms fall to your sides again. You already know the answer, of course, but you’ll hang onto whatever false hope your heart can conjure.

She nods, somber.

“Here and our sons' houses are their only real leads. You two don’t have any familial ties here, but Pal does, and they know it.”

“How long until they come looking?”

“I’m surprised they haven't already shown up,” she muses. “But knowing how they are, they’ll show up tomorrow, no doubt about it.”

You sigh deeply, letting your back hit the wall.

She searches your features for a few moments before continuing, kneeling down to inspect Hearth some more.

“I don’t have any proper hiding places here anymore, but I know some old friends who do.”

Your face lightens, some imperceptible weight lifted from your shoulders.

“They’d take in fugitives…?”

She chuckles, amused at your question.

“If I still know 'em after all this time, they’ll jump at the chance.”

The gentle rhythm of heavy footsteps returns, morphed and molded to lilt through the door and into your ears. Pal rounds the door frame with a thicker-than-average briefcase in his hand, kicking up a racket with every subtle movement it makes.

“Got it,” he proclaims, crossing the room and setting it on the bed next to Hearth with gusto. “Ya did a nice job redecoratin’, Kal.”

His phalanges come to rest on her shoulder, and she affectionately wraps them up in her own hand.

“I had to keep the house nice for when you came back,” she replies, looking up at him warmly.

His pearly teeth curl into an adoring grin. He takes a few moments to drink her features in before he separates from her, walking over and crossing his arms at the foot of the bed.

“How’s she lookin’?” he asks. “I know ya got ‘er boo-boos down pat, but what about the whole magic coma business?”

“I don’t have anything to remedy that, unfortunately,” she explains, catching him up. “But I’m willing to bet the Bakers would.”

His face lights up, near-childlike joy almost radiating off of him.

“No way!” he whisper-yells, still cognizant of his volume. “They’re still around after all that?”

“In a more… subdued way, but yeah, Ma’s kids are still here. They moved to the other side of the ring, near the unfinished developments.”

Pal raises his skeletal brow in surprise.

“In that little shopping plaza, or…?”

Kal nods as she breaks open the kit, an almost mythical assortment of medical tools and various forms of bandaging.

“They rebranded,” Kal explains. “They run an esoterica shop now. ‘Purrsian Oddities.’”

Pal uncrosses his arms, seemingly floored by the news.

“No kiddin’... What happened to ‘em?”

“Same thing that happened to us, but worse. City Watch raided their casino, seized the building and all of their assets, arrested Ma on treason, and kicked her family to the curb.”

As she cleans away the dried blood staining Hearth’s cheeks with a sterilized towelette, she looks up at the both of you.

“I’m sure they’ll fill you in once you head over tomorrow,” she says, eyes locking with Pal afterward. “It’ll be safer for the three of you there, babe. You know they’re bound to come knocking.”

Pal frowns as he crosses his arms again, the glow of his paranatural eyes beguiled by worry.

“You gonna be okay dealin’ with ‘em on your own?” he asks, his heart on his sleeve.

“One more day won’t hurt,” she sighs. “But you better be with me from then on forward, you got that?”

She jabs her pointer at him with an irresistible smile tugging at her lips.

Pal poses in a mock salute, his hooves sliding together underneath him.

“Yes ma’am,” he sounds off quietly.

They share a brief laugh, filling the otherwise tense air with a joviality you’ve been sorely missing. Even the corners of your own mouth begin to curl ever so slightly upward, as if simply being in proximity to their joy somehow commands it of you.

The moment passes, however, and Kalliope returns to her ministrations. Pal, halfway turned toward you, looks you over.

“You gonna be alright to head out on the town again?”

You shrug your shoulders, trying to ignore the sudden upswing in pain.

“If I have to.”

“We’ll be fine, ‘non,” he reassures. “It was a walk in the park today, and it’ll be a walk in the park in the mornin’.”

“You’re right to be worried, though,” Kalliope chimes in, glancing up at you after setting a bandage. “They’re not quite as overbearing now as they were twelve years ago, but it ain't due to a lack of ability.”

You nod absentmindedly, fears mounting. Pal picks the conversation with Kalliope back up, but their words fall on deaf ears.

In your own world, your eyes wander to the fading sunbeam still dancing through the window, those fleeting, golden glints of dust nowhere to be found.

The evening carried on quite quickly, the sun having set in what felt like minutes as opposed to its usual rhythm.

Kalliope, once she finished caring for Hearth, turned her attention to your own wounds. Thankfully, the spell hadn’t cut too terribly deep into your shoulder, and had only managed to sear your tender flesh with minor mana burns. After re-cleaning and re-bandaging it, Kalliope had given it a timeline of about two weeks to fully heal.

Which was, and still is, the only piece of truly good news you’ve heard in the past two days.

Now, the moon hangs low in the sky, a window-shaped beam of its light draped across your chest as you lie in bed. The uncertainty of tomorrow gnaws at your mind, keeping you awake even as the painkillers spread lullabies throughout your bloodstream.

The night drags on into eternity. Eventually, though, the medicine numbs the threshold through which your thoughts cross, and the black vignette of sleep creeps in from the edges of your vision.

Your final comprehensible thought of the day is of home.

Author's Note

we're back! sorry for the gigantic wait - a multitude of things kept me from updating, but that should all be solved soon, hopefully. more to come soon!