Author's Note
Recommended ambience
Thank you to Erynaster for the idea and link.
The Only Chapter
The rain crashed down against the puddles and rocks forming along the sludge of the beach.
The sound of far off thunder, and the heavy breathing of the dark blue mare stumbling around in the dark accentuated the sloshing sounds of the ocean and the crashing waves caused by the storm.
The droplets were heavy, and fell straight down with barely any wind to guide them; splashing up and covering even her underside as she pulled her shawl tighter around her form. She placed a hoof on a stone, stepping up and away from the water as she involuntarily shivered. Behind her was the forest, cascaded in darkness and barely silhouetted against the moonlight by the rain. In front of her was a small outcrop. The rocks she was currently standing on overlooked the ocean in front of her, even so, she could barely make out the reflection of the cloudy sky on its surface.
She felt water run down the back of her neck, and she shook her head, the muscles in her neck tensing in a biological bid to fight off the cold. Just off the edge of her vision, she saw a flicker of gold that shone through the droplets like a beacon, just for a split second. She turned her head to look, and caught sight of what was clearly a fire, flickering in the darkness.
The mare set her jaw and carefully maneuvered her way down the rocks, towards the light, the clacking of her hooves on stone was barely audible over the rain and occasional thunder.
After a moment, her hooves touched sand, and she began to trudge through the soaking beach front.
She got closer and closer, subconsciously slowing down as the scent of burning coals filtered into her nose with sky from the rain and salt from the ocean. She felt hope, in her confusion, and she ignored it.
"Hello?" Her voice rang out into the cacophony. It sounded loud in her ears, but it only carried a few hooves in front of her.
She took a few more cautious steps forwards, grinding her hooves into the wet sand for traction, even though the ground rock rode up her legs and itched something fierce; it was more important to have stability than to be comfortable, in case she needed to run away. The paranoia emanated and flowed into her like little shards of ice, with the light traveling along the air, gliding through the water to reach her fur and chill the flesh underneath.
She heard a humming noise, something soft. Almost dancing along the air to reach her ears, barely audible due to its volume, but still strikingly clear through the noise that surrounded her. She could see the fire clearly now, as clear as one could. The little thing flickered and angrily burned against the rain as the water tried to snuff it out. She didn't understand how the thing was still aflame, but assumed it must have been some kind of magic.
"Is somepony there?"
The humming stopped.
With only a few hooves of decent enough visibility, the mare was able to see the movement, and subsequent reflection of a pair of striking blue eyes that caught her own through the rain. The fire reflecting itself through the creature's eyes.
They both stared.
"Are you..."
This other pony was sitting out in the rain. With a fire out by the ocean; no cloak or tent to be seen. A stallion, if she was guessing correctly by the thick muzzle, and the height the pony had, even while sitting down. He made no move to respond, only gazing at her curiously through the firelit rain. Her head felt heavy, her mind fogged with things she couldn't understand.
The mare felt a flitter of seafoam graze her hoof, a wave coming up from the ocean to desperately try and suck her away into the stormy water; simply a vain reminder of the ocean's vast intent to consume all that entered. The water must've touched the fire too, but it didn't go out, though the stallion looked away, back towards the fire.
She approached. Coming within barely a length of the flame. She watched the rain pour into the fire from the sky, but it stayed lit. Burned on the sand in violation to the rules of magic and physics she barely understood. The stallion sat on the other side. He had a light blue coat, and a vibrant orange mane filled with variation of the colour, streaking through his mane. He may have been handsome if he wasn't soaked completely from head to tail. He didn't look up at her, and she stayed standing, confused but unnaturally calm.
"Is this your fire?"
"Mhm." He hummed lightly. "Bit late out? For travelers?" His voice was soft. Light. If he wasn't in front of her, she probably could've mistaken him for a mare.
"How did you guess?" She adjusted her coat while taking another step closer towards the heat.
He didn't answer for long enough that she was tempted to ask something else, or leave. "Sometimes, you can see the experiences of a pony." He said cryptically, into the air.
She sat down on her shawl and held her hooves out to the fire. She gave it another look over, trying to understand how it worked. As she was watching, she caught sight through the rain flinging tiny bits of sand into the air as it hit; lines forming underneath her. Little ambiently glowing lines drawn in the sand that curled in patterns that she recognized, but could never comprehend.
Suddenly the rain stopped, just over her head, the sound of contact continued, but water no longer struck her form. Cascades began to drip around her, forming small gouges in the sand where puddles began to form, like she had her own invisible umbrella.
"There you go." The stallion gave her a once over, before looking back at the fire, "Can't have you getting sick out here." He spoke lightly, that was true, but also aimlessly. Like he didn't mean what he was saying, or couldn't hear it himself; he sounded tired. Hurt.
The sound of pain in his voice was overshadowed by the magic he had just used without a horn, or any other visible focus.
"Who are you?" The question found its way out of her mouth. What else was she supposed to ask? What else was she supposed to do? Getting caught in the storm and lost in the woods was where her plan for her night broke apart. Flying blind, all she could do was wonder about the curious stallion on the beach with the fire that wouldn't go out, and the rain that would try, but would never hit her.
"No one."
Her mouth opened again, but nothing came out. "I'm... Iris." She eventually settled on.
The stallion didn't move, or look away from the fire, but he spoke, something that almost sounded humored. "You were named after an eye part?"
"The flower." She said, Softly, she wondered how he could hear her. How she could hear him. Then again... "How is-"
"Magic." He stated, answering her question.
She frowned, "Not magic I've ever seen."
"mmmm." Was all he had to say.
They sat. Iris felt like she was sitting in silence, as oppressive as it was, with pony instinct telling her to converse. It's not like she could simply rest out here in the rain. Though she considered it momentarily due to her current immunity to the storm. A bolt of lightning struck nearby, close enough that the wave of force called thunder was felt, rather than heard. The flash lit up the sky and the ground shook.
The stallion didn't move, he remained. Frowning into the fire.
"What are you doing out here?" She asked, raising her voice slightly. The sound of it didn’t reach her ears the right way. It could have been an echo, or maybe something else, but her pondering was thrown off by his return question.
"What are you doing out here?" He parroted back.
She rubbed her forehoof against her limb, trying to get some of the sand out of her frog. "I got lost."
"Lost in the dark." He intoned to himself, not referring to her current predicament.
She went silent again.
The rain continued to pour.
The ocean lapped at her hooves again, a dim reminder of its fury.
She looked into the fire. It burned with the energy all fires burn with, the water valiantly trying and failing to quench the heat. She waited in a bubble of magic while the fire gave her its energy, heating away the water that clung to her coat and her shawl in defiance to the storm and its violent lightning.
My light is brighter, my warmth is warmer.
The fire seemed to say, sitting there, burning away at nothing, somehow seeming smug despite being a fire.
I do not care
Said the storm, raging away with a force beyond what the little flame could comprehend.
I will consume you both.
Said the ocean. Angrily scowling off from the distance. Waiting.
"Wh-" The noise of the stallion speaking broke her away from her thoughts, but when she looked up to him from the fire, he wasn't speaking. Seemingly having given up the idea of speaking.
Lightning struck again. The thunder passed over them and bounced around the rocks near the beach's edge.
The ocean ravenously swallowed the noise.
"Why did you come here?" He said, asking the question slowly, carefully; as if she would dash across the flames to bite him if he was any less respectful and cautious.
"I saw your fire." She responded, equally carefully. She didn't know this stallion, after all. "I was lost, and cold."
"So you chose here? Of all places? The ocean is hardly a place to be warm."
The ocean agreed. Lapping at the edges of the light that shown around the small area the fire defiantly carved into the endless expanse of rain and storm.
"I just saw your fire." She repeated.
"So it was random chance? That you show up? Now of all times?"
She didn't understand, so she asked; it was the way of things for her, despite it never having been so before. "Why is it... is it strange?"
"No." He said, looking up from the fire. "This is exactly what always happens. I just..." She knew now why she could spot his eyes so clearly from the distance away she saw them from. The stallion's eyes were filled with unshed tears, barely possible to see through the rain that claimed every surface of his body. "I just wish I knew why."
"Why? Is there..." She didn't know why she was drawn to this strange stallion's internal musings, or why she could simply get over the incredible feat of magic an earth pony had supposedly done, but she felt sympathetic. She was lost. So was he.
"Can I help?"
He looked back into the fire.
She pushed a mound of sand forwards, leaving a gouge in the beach the size of her hoof that immediately began to fill with water, in less than an hour, it would be gone. Her hoofprints along the beach leading up to this place had probably already been washed away.
"Have you ever Loved anyone? Iris?"
If she had, she would not have told him. She hadn't, not really. A crush for a handsome stallion on some occasions, but never love. Certainly never Love, and absolutely not aged past the point for it to become 'Loved'. In that, she had no shame.
"No." She said, wondering, questioning. The thoughts took no form in her head, no meaning could be derived from what she considered. Yet, in the splotching of rain, the crackling of fire, the roar of thunder, and the swishing of the ocean waves, she thought, and she was.
"Have you ever dreamed of being Loved?"
'no' She wanted to say, but the question was too specific, too clearly meant for her that she couldn't bring herself to lie.
"I have. I... Where are you going with this?"
"Nowhere." He supplied, still unmoving, still staring into the fire with tears in his eyes. She couldn't know how she could tell not a single one had left his face to streak down his cheek and disappear in the water below his hooves. Though she could tell. It didn't matter if they fell anyways.
Thunder struck down again, and the first blast of wind struck against her side, spraying water sideways through the bubble and onto her face. Little tingles of the droplets registered in her mind as she watched the flame billow.
Not today!
The flame yelled into the storm. Though the storm did not notice. The flame was beneath it, and it's not like the wind was aiming for anything. It simply was; the fire thought too highly of itself, believing it was such an important target for the sky to snuff out with its power.
She opened her mouth to speak again, "There was this one stallion..."
He looked up to meet her eyes, and she continued, "He was from a neighboring village. He didn't stay but... I thought about him even after he left."
She wilted slightly under his gaze. In her heart, she knew her voice had some sway here, but her mind warned her of an unseen danger, tried to tell her to be silent, that she was making a mistake by speaking. The anxiety bubbled around her throat as she continued, "I never knew him, not really... but I imagined what it could have been like if I had. I did dream about it, once."
He stared on. Oblivious to the water running down his face in the gallons.
"Have you?" She said, her question tapering off at the end, like a cringe that was only audible as the lilt of her question didn't quite make it out of her mouth.
"I don't know."
"You don't know if you've ever Loved anypony?"
"No."
Did he mean... no he didn't know? Or was he disagreeing with what her interpretation of his answer was? He still stared at her, or through her, maybe even over her. She didn't know, so she tried something else. "Has anypony ever Loved you?"
"No."
An expression flexed its way across his face, the first she'd seen aside from the deep frown he wore. The change loosened a few tears that escaped his muzzle into the rain, only to be swallowed as the ocean came up to meet them at the sand, they went unseen and their wetness unknown and unmeasurable.
Except for Iris. For she saw.
Thunder rumbled again. She shuffled in place as he stared at her.
"Have you ever dreamed about being Loved?"
He blinked, and she realized that it was the first time she'd seen him do so.
"Yes." He nodded, "A cruel, unfair thing."
She frowned, "It's not cruel to want Love."
"I didn't say..." He cut himself off. Then looked back into the fire before speaking again, "Cruel to others. Unfair to those who come in my dreams."
"Why?"
"I... I don't know." He blinked again, and she watched rather than heard him take a shuddering, deep inhale as another tear disappeared into the black.
"How... could you not know?"
"How could I? Know what is fair and kind for others?" He snorted, "Is it kinder to teach a harsh lesson? Or crueler to let one learn through their own pain? Does it even matter?"
"Are you...?"
"I've never tried to be, but..." His frown deepened, "I could be wrong."
"Is this still about being Loved?" She said.
He didn't answer. Electing to continue staring into the flame. By now, she was nearly dry. Her chest and neck were poofing up from underneath her shawl as the air heated against her fur. She shifted in place, inching ever so closer to the fire as it continued to shed its light for her to barely see the stallion just across from her. Close enough that if she wanted, she could reach through the fire and touch him.
But she wouldn't. There was a fire, she would get burned.
So close, but still too far.
The ocean splashed against her hooves again. This time, the wave wasn't only seafoam stretching itself across the beach. This time the wave ran up her flanks where she sat, and splashed against her hooves as it ran up to meet her.
It didn't speak this time, not in the way inanimate objects always did to Iris. The ocean needed no announcement, no claims of grandeur. The sound of crashing waves in the distance, and the water pooling at her hooves were enough of a warning: move, or be consumed.
No!
The little fire said
This is my home! This is who I am! You will not consume me!
Wind buffeted against her and the fire and its empty words, or thoughts, or whatever it was fires had.
She looked up at the stallion again.
It looked like he had sunk into the darkness, or that the fire's light was somehow failing to touch him through the rain.
"Are you okay?"
The stallion didn't move anything but his lips. "No." He leaned forwards after, like a sigh with his whole body.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
The same procedure, except he breathed out his answer like it was something profane, something to be worshiped and stolen, fought for and sought after to each end of anywhere that could ever be.
"Yes" He begged. His word, the single tiny thing that it was, bounced around. It hit the rain, and the flame, and the ocean. It bounced off of the sand, and the rocks. The wind and the sky. It touched gravity and slid through time, it passed through thousands of memories and ideas of life and death that happened right at this place, on this beach. All of the things that he saw here in this moment, yet only a single word reached Iris' ears. Bouncing around her mind in kind.
She had never felt so small.
"You can, if you want."
He blinked again, this time, the water fell from his eyes in streams, joining the cascading water down his mane and fur.
"How?"
The question slid into her mind like grime. How? How? Ho-
She shook her head to shake off the feeling. There was still a lingering sense of dysmorphia, something that just felt wrong.
"You just... start talking." She answered, though it felt incomplete, even to her.
He didn't.
She turned her gaze back to the ocean.
It continued to rage and froth in its impossibly massive container, the storm along with it. What was the storm if not power gifted to the sky by the ocean? Were they connected?
Did it matter?
A bigger wave ran against her hooves. She lost sight of them, as her shawl pulled against the sand as the wave swept it out from under her flanks. The divot she'd made in the beach was gone with the wave as it pulled away, yet the flame still burned, even while submerged, the water only steamed and boiled away around its edges.
"You should go soon." He said, back to his quiet, nearly effeminate tone, "The tide is finally starting to come in. It will pull you away, eventually."
She ignored the dripping fur on her belly from the last wave as a strike of thunder drowned out her next words. Once it was finished reverberating, she spoke again, "What about you?"
He didn't answer. He hadn't asked her, and it was clear that he wasn't planning on leaving.
He'd go out with the flame.
Her hind hooves itched against her body from where she sat.
Get up
They said to her, but she did not.
"What will you do? When the tide comes in?" She asked, not feeling within herself the dread of his answer. A stallion wouldn't come out here to drown in the cold and the rain.
"Burn." Came billowing out from around his mouth, filled with conviction, filled with energy that didn't reach his eyes as it came from far deeper within.
Yes!
The fire flickered
We'll fight the ocean and win! Nothing can stand against me!
She believed it. If rain and waves couldn't put it out, could being fully submerged do it?
Did it matter?
"I don't... I don't understand." Iris had reached the point of being polite where answers were far more important than manners. "Why are you out here? Who are you? What is..." Then she realized the emotions in her head weren't hers. "What is happening to me?" The fire, the wind, the talking? How did that feel so normal? How did... Where was she? What was she doing here? Wasn't she going home?
How did she get so lost?
She wanted to be scared, but bigger emotions that weren't hers bore down on her mind, washing away her meager experiences like they were nothing. She was calm, calculated, and more, she was desperate. With that being the closest emotion she wanted to feel she-
I am tired of you
A bolt of lightning struck so close that she had to shut her eyes, and she could still see the flash. The crack of thunder was so loud she didn't hear it.
She opened her eyes again while her ears slowly began to stop ringing, the pitter patter of rain coming back into focus as another wave sloshed against her, chest high this time.
The fire had dimmed, she couldn't tell if it was simply because it was nearly completely under the water, or if it had lost some of its luster. The sight of the stallion in front of her was reduced to the tiniest flicker of light from the fire reflecting off of his eyes.
She hadn't jumped from the lightning. It hadn't scared her, especially since she felt it coming. She didn't understand how she knew, or how she could understand the feelings she was feeling, but the waves crashed against her all the same.
"Who are you?" She asked again.
"I'm sorry." He said, as the water slowly began to drift back, this time she felt its pull. The ice and the weight of the water tugged at her as her front hooves nearly picked themselves up from the sand. "I'm sorry that I trapped you here."
"You didn't trap me here." She said, since it was true. "I came here. I'm staying here."
"You're only doing that because I'm making you." He monotoned, the emotion from his voice gone.
The fire gasped for breath and writhed anew as the wave fully came away, and the sand became visible again.
"Maybe." She said calmly, the figments of her sanity beginning the grasp at the edges of the pit she had been lowered into so slowly that she hadn't noticed. She couldn't find it in herself to blame him, even though it was his fault.
Around her, the world stormed. Everything except for the stallion, the only thing not fighting.
The endless serenity flowing from him abruptly cut off as she gasped for air like she was surfacing from the water that was physically trying to take her. She stood on reflex, fear taking hold of her limbs as her mind began to start reasserting itself over the winding, powerful emotions that weren't her own.
She nearly bolted, but her first hoof raised into the air touched the first drop of rain she'd felt come straight down, and she was reminded of what the stallion had done to keep her warm and dry.
Endless care came crashing down on her from him as he looked up to her leaving. She felt him say goodbye, deep from within his core, and she felt the despair in opposition to being alone.
The feeling of being left. The feeling of being betrayed. The feeling of being abandoned.
Her hoof slowly came to rest on the wet sand again.
He watched her.
She looked back.
He frowned as she took a step back, and he began to cry again once she sat down.
"Please don't. There isn't a point." He cried softly through the rain.
She didn't know what to say to that.
"It's not fair." And he wasn't talking about her staying.
She felt the need to clutch her head as the pressure increased.
"You don't have to stay." He pleaded.
"Neither do you." She rebutted coldly. "We could leave together."
"Except I won't."
"Except you won't." She parroted back to him.
They were silent in the rain. This time, the wave came up to her shoulders. The splash crossed her back, and she nearly fell from the force. Everything was plunged into the endless black of the night as her sinuses were overwhelmed with salt. It took full seconds this time, nearly ten, for the water to go back to where it came from, desperately trying to rip her from the sand. The heat from the fire only served to remind her how cold she was now, soaked just as much as he was.
"You'll go out." He whispered.
"And you won't." She answered, defiant, like the flame. The little flame alone on the beach, far from where it should have been, fighting against the rain and ocean.
She knew when the water came for her again, it would take her, but she stayed. She didn't know the emotions that compelled her to stay. She didn't understand the endless desire that came with them, or the serenity that staved off the overwhelming urge to run from the terrifying power of the water.
But she stayed. The fire kept flickering against the water with might it didn't own, with meaning it couldn't understand, and time that was running far too short to be fair.
Her mind grew heavy as the waves crashed against her once more. She wasn't sure which was which anymore, but her hooves came off the ground, and she lost the sand to the fog in her mind.
She tumbled in the water, and coughed to only have stinging salted water flow into her mouth.
A hoof grabbed her around the neck and stopped her in motion like she had just hit a solid wall, her limbs flailed as the water sucked at her, screaming in rage at what it could yet not take.
She took a deep breath as the water flowed away, and the stallion stepped back from her as her mind and the world came back into focus.
He was burned, having stepped through the fire to grab her.
She panted, standing in place, having been moved a few hooves to the side. The water crashed down over her from the sky again, though she barely noticed, chilled to the bone by what had just nearly happened to her. The emotions that weren't hers began to fade as the stallion stepped back like he'd touched a fire with his bare hooves. He stepped away from her filled with guilt and pain, yet his expression set into a neutral line. As the wind calmed and the rain slowed.
Her mind cleared as he spoke again.
"Leave." He ordered, except it contained nothing in the instruction. No meaning, no purpose. Just audio, arranged in just the right pattern to meet her expectation of language. Enough for her to understand, enough for her to be fooled.
She did. She left the waves on the sand where they were meant to be, far away from pony folk, and far away from normal people. As she ran, the water slipped away from her form, the wind and rain closer to what she was meant to experience.
She didn't know what she lost, but she lived. The fire burned for another couple of years before going out.
The ocean stayed. It waited. It hurt, but what it wanted was incomprehensible.
Who it was was lost to infinity.
Its tears didn’t matter.
