What are you looking at? Holds-the-Fire asks, squinting as she gazes with Chester toward the distant dark teeth that are the Blackrock Spires' namesake.

Chester sighs, his thoughts returning to the present.

He points to the tiny cluster of dots lower on the mountainside. "Do you see those buildings? I live there with the woman from the picture, and the other devotees. Her name is Chryssa-swamini. The Holy Mother. She's… my pack leader, I guess you'd say, but more than that. She guides us all on the path to enlightenment." He doesn't wait for Holds-the-Fire to ask for clarification on that one. "Understanding ourselves and our existence. Conquering our base desires so we can live free of pain and sorrow. Shaping ourselves into perfect humans—or transcending humanity."

Holds-the-Fire's hand creeps to the base of her throat, as if on reflex, as she shades toward faded yellow. I understand that, I think, she says. I, too, used to have something which made me a perfect wolf.

Chester sighs. "But I'm beginning to think her version of perfect and mine don't look a lot alike. The way that you feel about guns, the way you think when you want them, she feels about… a lot of things. Maybe kind of, um, not-great things. Including the, uh, cow-man who fired the guns at you."

Then I think I do not like her very much, Holds-the-Fire says, though the statement's lack of red marks it as a mere observation.

Chester winces. "A lot of people feel that way."

In that case, why do you not challenge her right to rule the pack? Holds-the-Fire asks, shedding her pain for a light violet curiosity as she changes the subject.

"Me?" Chester blinks and turns to her. "No! I'm not enlightened."

Why would that matter, if her pack will not support her?

"But they will," Chester says. "People leave her pack all the time, if they can't put up with what she has to do to keep us on the right path. But we find new believers for her pack all the time, to replace the ones who threaten her, or betray her, or the ones who try to buy their way to enlightenment but don't have the right mindset, or the ones who don't believe in her enough to devote everything to her." He hangs his head, staring at the buildings. "I… think I'm starting to not believe."

Then leave, and lead your own pack. Holds-the-Fire tilts her head, violet darkening. Surely THAT cannot work differently for humans, can it?

"Nobody would follow me," Chester says defensively. "The Holy Mother's, um, pack are all there for enlightenment. I'm not enlightened, so I've got nothing to offer them."

Ches-ter, Holds-the-Fire says with lilac-tinted pink. She pokes him in the side, then turns her head and yaps. There's motion from the surrounding woods as the lounging wolfpack scrambles to their collective feet and closes in around the boulder, tails up and languidly wagging. No color is exchanged, and Chester realizes that was very much deliberate; the wolves came at her request, not at her manipulation.

My pack knows my teeth are not the sharpest nor my legs the fastest, Holds-the-Fire says. But they trust me, because I find good prey and comfortable sleep-hollows, and I have other ways to provide for them when prey is scarce. Even if your… Chris-sa… is strong enough to deter a direct fight, she is still vulnerable to challenge. Many already leave her pack, which means she does not provide.

"Did you, uh, miss the part where I'm not capable of challenging her?" Chester says, his concern quickly growing.

Holds-the-Fire fixes him with a brown stare, and gestures down off the boulder at the enormous blue-gray wolf who looks like he could swallow Chester in two bites. Did you think I won my challenge against Father with tooth and claw? I proved my right to lead by showing that I could better take care of us all. She spreads the fingers of one hand and presses them lightly against his chest. Even the short time I have known you has made it obvious that your heart is full of an endless desire to give, and to keep from harm. If you would learn to assert yourself as a leader, you would see how valuable that is.

That is, by no small margin, the nicest thing an enlightened being has ever told him.

He wants to believe it. He tries to believe it. But a lifetime of lectures is screaming his inadequacy at him.

"Look," Chester says, struggling to ignore the memories and keep his rising unease down. "It's more complicated than that."

As she senses his emotional shift, Holds-the-Fire's stare silently shades to the rose pink of disappointment. Of course it is, she says. She vaults off the boulder—sending a few wolves scattering away from her path—and snatches the rifle off the forest floor, beckoning him back to ground level. For you. But it is that simple with wolves, and I must provide for my pack.

A stirring of shimmering gold—which Chester is starting to regret ever seeing—curls around Holds-the-Fire's edges, but mercifully, this time it's intermingled with a purer green, an earnest yearning to be the leader her wolves deserve.

I am not your Chris-sa and I will not make her mistakes, Holds-the-Fire says, that intertwined pair of desires complicating the declaration. Now. Help me.

Fear curdles Chester's stomach. But that was a direct request, and he's not sure he can put this off any longer.

He sits on the edge of the boulder, sliding down more carefully this time. He deliberates for a few moments. Then he walks over to Holds-the-Fire and gingerly takes Anton's rifle from her hands, his adrenaline ratcheting up as his hands close around the textured wood of the… grip? (He doesn't actually know what the narrow part behind the trigger is called; his entire experience with firearms has come from TV shows, action movies, and Chet Land and Tennessee Walker novels. It does look kind of grippy, though.)

It's Chester's first time ever holding a gun, and it's as awful as he had ever imagined. There's a weight to it, an ugly density, that feels like an anchor dragging his soul to Tartarus. The idea of putting a bullet into a person, turning them from a vibrant color source into an unresponsive object, is—and always has been—a source of blind existential terror. (Even the idea of Holds-the-Fire using it for hunting makes Chester queasy. Despite animals being colorless, he has always felt they deserve to be thought of like people.)

On the other hand, all his training tells him he should just do as she asks. She's the golden one; if she thinks killing is enlightened, he has no right to question anything she says. Not to mention the wolves—they have to hunt to survive. Refusing to help her might doom everyone she cares about.

But she also just told him to be more assertive…

"Listen," Chester says, through a dry throat. "I want you to make me a promise." He keeps his eyes locked on the gun, barreling forward before she can interrupt, and before he looks at her and loses his nerve. "You're right, you have a pack to hunt for, but killing someone is a move you can't ever take back. And you don't understand how complicated things get when you use guns. They're huge trouble in the human world. So…"

Chester hesitates. Don't use guns on people? But what if Anton rampages into the woods to murder her and he has removed Holds-the-Fire's only means of self-defense? And he doesn't think she'll agree to that anyway, but he needs to say something. So he lunges for the first alternative that comes to mind: "Promise me you'll never point a gun with any anger or pain in your heart. You want this to help your pack, right? So you should only point a gun when you know, with a clear mind, how it benefits them."

There's no immediate answer, so Chester looks up. His heart stops. Holds-the-Fire is staring up at him with barely restrained pink, her fingers curling into fists.

"See, like, um, right now," he squeaks. "This would be a bad time for you to have a gun."

Holds-the-Fire steps into his personal space, opening her mouth and curling her lips back. Her teeth aren't the jagged fangs of her packmates, but the gesture is nonetheless intimidating—even without the ominous backdrop of that pink shading into an exasperated pastel red. Ches-ter. I am TRYING to do this your way. But I took you as pack, and with that comes responsibility. You are finding every possible manner of avoiding it.

He swallows, "Because it's a bad idea. I've told you why it's a bad idea."

Why won't you just teach me? she says, that terrifying red slipping even further toward pure anger. This has NOTHING to do with emotions! EVERYTHING I do is for my pack!

"I'm not disputing that!" Chester blurts out, his will to fight crumpling. He thought that his principles were important enough to stand up to her red, but he hates, hates, hates knowing he has upset people—and, more importantly, knowing he has upset her, this impossible enlightened color-sensing kindred soul. He takes a step back and promptly smacks into the boulder.

She steps forward, staying in his personal space, and he desperately retreats into justifying himself. "But when you're upset you can make bad decisions that seem like good decisions at the time! Like asking Esau to help you tell the Holy Mother she should treat people better—" Chester shrieks and raises his hands on reflex as she raises her arms.

Holds-the-Fire lunges for his wrists, slamming them to the stone by his shoulders. He drops the rifle, which bounces to the ground at their feet, and for a moment blind panic grips him—but Holds-the-Fire seems much more interested in him than the gun.

Then she leaps, forcing Chester to bear her full weight, and the conversation vanishes into a one-sided fight. She roughly kicks out one of his knees and twists their bodies as he topples, slamming him onto his back. Chester yelps and does his best to ball up, his arms still in her iron grasp.

As he struggles, visions of being torn apart by wolves dance through Chester's terrified mind, and he glances around at his approaching doom. But the other wolves are merely watching with distant interest. Like… he did something that came across as a challenge, and they're observing how their leader fends the challenge off. Some tiny part of Chester's mind consoles him that at least he's getting a crash course at thinking like a wolf.

Wait.

He throws out a wild guess as Holds-the-Fire slams him flat again and pins his chest with a knee. "Or like challenging your father when you weren't ready to lead the pack yet!" Ooh, old yellow as she hesitates, that one hit home. He pushes that button further before he loses the opening. "You didn't figure it out right away, because you tried for so long to be a regular wolf just like the rest of them. But what makes you a good leader is that you're smart."

You don't know what it's like to lead a wolfpack! Holds-the-Fire shouts, her earlier rage bleeding off into cream. It doesn't MATTER that I'm smart! Smart isn't what makes a good wolf! I don't have that luxury!

"But you didn't win your challenge by being what everyone else thinks is a good wolf. You won it by fighting smart." And, wow, that got her yellow blazing, but at least it's not rage. "So I think that being smart also makes you the best wolf you can be." He wheezes as her knee presses down, but manages to add: "Please. Be smart and listen."

Holds-the-Fire stews in her yellow and cream for a moment, then abruptly eases off the pressure on his chest. She sits back against the boulder, balling up and hugging her knees, her guilt strengthening in hue but fading in intensity. That self-directed yellow starts to develop notes of muddy orange as Chester tentatively sits up.

A few of the wolves circle in. She flares a pulse of un-echoed brown at them—reasserting command?—then gray disinterest, which they do echo before returning to their distant sprawl. Then she glances back at Chester, and cream-says: I'm sorry.

Chester's anxiety begins to untwist. For long moments, as he gasps for breath, neither one of them says anything.

He scoots over bit by bit to sit next to Holds-the-Fire again, making certain as he goes that he's not provoking any warm colors. "It's fine," he says cautiously. "You've got to be under a lot of stress with your responsibilities."

That is not it, Holds-the-Fire says, low-intensity pinks and reds returning—but, thank goodness, clearly not aimed at him. I never should have NEEDED to fight smart. But when I lost everything, I had no choice but to copy Ember's tricks. That anger begins to bleed away into tawny yellow. At first I was proud, when I took fire from the humans.

She fumbles through the furs at her waist, where Chester hadn't realized she had crafted a little pouch, and pulls out a dirty, scuffed metal square. It takes Chester a moment. Then his eyes widen. It's a lighter.

I thought I could become a greater master at her own powers than she was. But my fire is beginning to die, and I have no replacement for it, and I have begun to realize how little I know. Her colors drain away into a depressed white. If you will not help me with the gun, soon I will have only broken tools which do nothing, and my smarts will count for nothing.

Chester holds out his hand for the lighter. This, at least, he can help with; it's basic Colt Scout stuff. "May I?"

Holds-the-Fire blazes out into warring green and orange—then slams gray down over both. She studies him for a moment. Chester tries to project helpfulness, curiosity, gentle resolve.

Their eyes meet. Holds-the-Fire lets out a breath. She looks down, emotions still locked behind an iron gray wall. Then she presses the warm square of metal into his palm, her hand trembling.

Chester thumbs the lighter open, then flicks the wheel. A few sparks flare to life, but no flame.

See? Holds-the-Fire says. I can still use the spark to ignite dried moss, if I am cautious, but it does not burn as it used to.

He gently works the innards of the lighter out of its metal casing, then upends it and sniffs the packed cotton inside the reservoir. "Well, there's your problem, it's dry," he says, then hurriedly adds: "Not water. Lighter fluid. A special, uh, fire-liquid humans make. If you come with me closer to town, I can go buy some for you, and all you'll need to do is fill it up whenever it starts doing this."

Holds-the-Fire's rush of violet dissolves into muddy orange embarrassment. It is that simple? Pour fire-liquid in?

"Nothing is simple when it's new," Chester says consolingly, fingers fumbling as he reassembles the lighter. "Look at what you've had to teach me about being a wolf."

She rewards him with a ripple of purple, which subsides to a vibrant pastel blue as she leans in and presses her head to his shoulder. You do not understand how much this means. Thank you.

Chester thinks maybe he does, given Holds-the-Fire's very name, but he just smiles and basks in that blue, pocketing the lighter so he can circle an arm around her back to hold her.

Guilt begins to gnaw at him as they sit together, though. No wonder she was so desperate about the gun, if this is the sort of basic issue she's been struggling with. To not even understand how a lighter works…

Wait.

Chester's brain derails as something Twilight said hits him between the eyes. "It controlled instincts. Meaning it also made brains shut up…"

Was the Wrong in the fog-world, that blood-red gemstone monster, some remnant of the Bloodstone Crown?

On its face, the idea quickly hits contradictions—Holds-the-Fire is almost terrifyingly smart, and if the mind-destroying Bloodstone Crown was still active, then she wouldn't understand lighters but she also wouldn't have picked up everything he taught at nearly instant speed. But the one thing the blood-red monster had said was "Fix me". Meaning: The working bloodstone was once holding her back, but now it's broken and can't any more. And even the smartest person in the world, with a newly liberated mind, would struggle trying to understand technology from a cold start.

Part of him protests that the bloodstone thing is entirely unnecessary to explain Holds-the-Fire's issues. But now that Chester's brain has seized on the idea, he can't let it go—because it takes an enormous step toward explaining his insane, terrifying experience in crazy fog-world. And dropping that piece into his mental map sends a wave of other implications crashing down like falling dominoes.

Fact: There's a chance Holds-the-Fire isn't actually a villain.

If the Bloodstone Crown drove her crazy and suppressed her intense intellect, she wasn't herself when she attacked Twilight. No wonder Twilight's experience with her was so incredibly different from his own! He needs to broker some sort of cease-fire and get them talking. Help Twilight see this amazing girl for who she really is.

Fact: The Bloodstone Crown isn't entirely inert.

The one downside of the bloodstone theory is that it means admitting that Holds-the-Fire could pose a renewed threat, if that gemstone monster inside her ever gets fixed and wakes back up. That means she needs ongoing help—keeping her brain engaged, keeping instinct from taking her over.

Chester's heart leaps at the thought that the time he spends with her might be the core of her redemption. Then he catches himself. No. Rein that in. As amazing as that fantasy is, if he lets base desire drive his decisions he's going to mess this up, like he has over and over again with the Holy Mother.

Fact: She's still using, in some small way, the bloodstone's powers.

… and that one stabs him in the gut to admit. "Crown-talking" is exactly what gave them common ground, and he just pushed her into exploring it deeper. This, he realizes, is why he can't base his decisions on fantasy—it's possible he's making her worse with every conversation they share.

But what can he do about that? Unless she learns spoken language—and no matter how smart she is, that might take years—he has no way to help her engage her brain without communicating.

But he can get her to be more human. Use more tools.

… and that's a very compelling reason to help her with the gun, isn't it. If she can hunt with nothing but tools, her incentive to use the bloodstone for her pack evaporates.

Ches-ter? Holds-the-Fire light-violet-says while he's wrestling with that. You have been deep in think-feel for some time.

He blinks and reorients. She's staring up at his face, that hue of curiosity strong and holding. A tiny voice whispers to tell her everything so they can mutually sort it out, but… that's a lot. That's a whole lot, and maybe he's wrong, and the idea of upsetting this fresh, perfect connection with terrifying half-baked theories makes him queasy.

So he doesn't evade the question, exactly, but he skips to the end.

"Listen," he says, "I'm sorry about making the gun thing such a production."

Several conflicting colors swirl through Holds-the-Fire's blue; she draws back to look into his eyes, and they resolve into a cream matching his own guilt. No, she says, you were right. I have much to learn about tools. You have your promise, Ches-ter. I will use the gun only with a clear head, to protect or to hunt for my pack.

"Oh," he says, surprised and relieved. "Thank you."

If you wish to teach me of it later, we can speak of other tools first.

"No, it's fine," he says, looking around the ground for the rifle and picking it back up again. "I did say I would help."

As he examines the firearm, though, Chester's doubts creep back in. He's in the teacher's role because Holds-the-Fire has Celestia levels of unfamiliarity with technology, but he's barely any better. There's an elongated wooden body, taller at the rear side, with a pointy little wooden ridge on the underside near the trigger, and a groove up above it which contains a prominent metal… lever of some kind. A simple dark metal barrel starts near that lever and extends a foot beyond the forward end of the wood, with a lighter-colored, slightly recessed section in front of the lever. The big monocular thing mounted up on top of the barrel would probably be the gun sight… no, the scope, it's half the length of the barrel with several dials on it and a "3.5-10x50" label that probably means it lets you see 3.5 to 10 times farther than the default 50 yards or something.

Holds-the-Fire sits side-to-side with him, reaching past him to one of the scope dials and rotating it. The most I could figure out was that this lets you choose what the gun will hurt, she says in light violet, gesturing with a finger to the numbers. But I did not experiment with it further, because I do not understand human runes and I did not wish to harm a packmate by mistake.

"Alright," Chester says, "Gun Safety 101." He swings the barrel of the rifle out in front of him, keeping it lowered to the ground, and steals heavily from a lecture he half-remembers from some TV police procedural; it's terrifying that this makes him the most qualified person here. "The metal bits which hurt things come from the end of this tube. Never, ever point that at anything you're not willing to kill. Got it?" He gestures to the forest in front of him. "Could you make sure there are no wolves in that direction while we're fiddling with this?"

Got it, Holds-the-Fire echoes, then thinks, mild colors swirling amid the excitement of violet. She settles for yipping to call the wolves over to the boulder, then flashes them a washed-out orange which appears to be some variant of a "stay" command, and walks with Chester away from the pack again. How do you choose who it kills?

"You don't," Chester says. "That's what makes a gun so dangerous—it hurts whoever is in front of the tube, whether you meant to hurt them or not." He gestures to the trigger. "The only control you have is, when you pull this, that's when it activates." Keeping the rifle pointed at the ground several feet away, Chester wraps his hand around the grip—oh, that's what the little bottom ridge is for—and threads his finger through the trigger guard.

He squeezes. There's no give. Nothing happens.

Holds-the-Fire looks at him, light violet intensifying. Chester nods back, mind whirling. Why isn't it working?

Ah, wait. He dimly recalls some action movie where the inexperienced protagonist stole an enemy's gun and pointed it at them, only to discover the safety was on the whole time. "One more thing," he adds. "There's a part called a 'safety' which helps you only shoot when you really mean it. If the lever is in the safe position, the trigger is locked." He takes the hand which was holding the forward part of the barrel and flips the comically oversized lever near the trigger up, then goes back into firing position. "Observe."

Aaaaaand still nothing.

Holds-the-Fire silently cocks her head as Chester fumbles with the oversized lever. Nope, the rifle won't fire either in the top or bottom position. Chester examines the area around the lever, and realizes there was a second, smaller lever he missed—it's a J-shaped metal thumb-switch at the back end of the barrel, going side-to-side instead of up-and-down. He triumphantly thumbs it to the right, points the gun at a nearby tree, and… still nothing. He wrestles with the rifle again, discovering that now not only is the trigger locked, but he can't even move the giant lever from the down position.

Is it broken? Holds-the-Fire asks.

"It doesn't look broken," Chester says. "Just, I, um, haven't actually done this before."

Ah, Holds-the-Fire says, a bit of pink shading into her light violet. She reaches up to the rifle, toying with the now-locked large lever and wrapping a finger inside the trigger guard with Chester's.

"We, uh, shouldn't both be trying to fire it at once," Chester says, then sighs and shifts the rifle over to Holds-the-Fire's grasp, showing her how to wrap her hand around the grip and hold up the barrel with her other hand. This frees his hands up to prod with the levers, and he quickly makes a promising discovery: when he tries to return the small J-shaped one to its original position, it goes farther left. Apparently it was a three-way switch instead of a two-way one, and on closer examination, the barrel end now aligns with a small word "FIRE" etched into the metal.

"Okay," he says, "so this little one—"

There's a thunderous crack. The rifle leaps backward in Holds-the-Fire's grip, the butt end smacking into her shoulder, and chunks of bark explode off a nearby tree.

She yips orangely, jerking her hands back from the rifle and smacking Chester in the face. He reels back, momentarily blinded. He can hear the gun drop to the ground and the wolfpack leap to their collective feet. Then the air explodes with a cacophony of howling barks. Chester glances around—an onrushing tsunami of bared teeth and raised hackles—and immediately reverses course, lunging toward Holds-the-Fire and flinging his arms around her. "Calm them down!" he shouts, and has the presence of mind to add mentally: CALM THEM DOWN!

A wave of blue surges outward, instantly quieting the clamor. Holds-the-Fire barks sharply into the sudden silence. One by one, wolves step backward and lower themselves, belly to ground.

Chester clings to his savior, feeling sweat bead as he gasps rapidly for breath. He gradually becomes aware that Holds-the-Fire—whose orange is fading somewhat faster than the hammering of his heart—is clinging to him back, a fact which calms him considerably.

"So, uh," he says as his pulse slows. "As I was about to say. That tiny lever. When it's all the way on the left, the gun is ready to fire."

I do not believe I will forget that, Holds-the-Fire says, her orange fading toward a wary orange-gray as her eyes remain locked on the rifle.

"You should"—Chester pauses to swallow—"make sure it's always over to the right unless you're just about to shoot."

Understood.

Still orange-gray, Holds-the-Fire finally detaches herself from Chester, approaches the rifle as if it were a snake poised to strike, and gingerly picks it up, avoiding touching anywhere near the trigger while she thumbs the safety closed.

"But, hey, that's progress!" Chester says, trying to force some cheerfulness into his voice—wait, no, that's pointless, he needs to force cheerfulness into his mood. It is progress; he affirms that to himself for a moment, and gives her as genuine a smile as he can muster. "Now you know what it's like to fire a gun, and we'll be ready for the next time—hey, do you hear that?"

Evidently the wolves did, because before he even finishes the sentence, their ears are perking and heads swiveling in the direction of the creek. Holds-the-Fire, too, turns in that direction, dropping to a three-limbed half-crouch with her free hand still gripped around the rifle.

Whatever is approaching is small, but too rapid for stealth. The crackle of deadfall and the rustle of bushes and tall grasses are getting quickly and steadily louder, and in moments Chester is able to see the swaying of displaced greenery, moving in a straight line up the hill toward them.

Although Holds-the-Fire is holding her ground, the wolves are starting to back away and clump up, and Chester is starting to wonder if he too should find a hiding spot. Then an ice-blue border-collie-sized form bursts into the clearing around the boulder, skidding to a stop as she realizes she's not alone.

"Chester!" Twilight shouts, a wave of indigo relief surging through her. Then red blasts it away with the force of a fire hose.

Her head swivels, and she locks eyes with a blazing red, growling Holds-the-Fire.

"You," Twilight snarls.

Author's Note

Uh-oh.

One more reminder that we're cramming three chapters in this week before I leave for Everfree NW! Tune in Thursday, Aug. 22, for "A Wolf Of Her Word".