CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX - FOSTER AND ME
“Perhaps very late / our dreams joined / at the top or at the bottom, / up above like branches moved by a common wind, / down below like roots that touch.” - Pablo Neruda

Tromping off confidently on my own, I marched down the splashitty hallway, all resolute and determined and stuff. I had to find that zebra. To rescue her. To prove to myself that we could finish this fucking mission. Without Fate to guide us. Without master plans. Without love-y feelings getting in the way. Just me, my friends, and the power of my own will.

“Uh…which way do we go?” I spun around in circles.

I’d reached the spot where Scribbles had first investigated the water chute. It was brightly lit now. Up ahead, just beyond those nooks that we’d hidden ourselves in (just half an hour before), was three paths: one wet, one dry, and one practically a water slide.

“Ees none of those," said Misty, ambling from behind.

“I knew that,” I replied.

“You don't have to pretend to be okay,” said Cliff with eyes like maelstroms - wide enough to swallow an entire pirate ship. “That was really tough - what you did just now. It was difficult even to watch.”

“Very sweet of you," I said, averting my own eyeballs, distracting myself, pretending to probe the sewers in search of The Right Way to Go. “...But I am okay,” I added. “And right now we have a zebra to rescue.”

Even as the words escaped my mouth, my mind drifted far far away from the zebra rescue, the sewer labyrinth, or anything even remotely resembling the task at hoof.

I needed to know where Scribbles was. What she was doing. How she was doing. Had she made it to the end of the sewer tunnel? And wound her way up that silo toward the clown hole? Or was she maybe going really super slow ‘cause it was pitch black down there without Misty's orb nearby?

My brain resorted to sewer math: a desperate struggle to calculatize where Scribbles was; how fast she was progressing; how long it'd take before she found the Sneaker Society, led them off our trail, and made her way back to Safety.

I ruminatized the whole time. Scanning the sewer for a way out - a way forward - a way through. While my stupid brain just kept on looking back.

Damnit! cried a voice inside my head. Get a hold of yourself. Focus on your actual fucking surroundings. For once.

A gentle breeze, as if in reply, wafted down the hallway from some distant crack or clown hole, and tickled my mane. Reminded me of the world outside my head. The sights of grease-stained walls. The sound of water running over stone.

“Hay, Misty,” I said aloud. “Where the fuck is–;” I spun on my hooves, expecting to holler back at the unicorn. But Bananas Foster was there instead. Inches from my face.

“Ahh!” I startled. Knocking the last of sewer math right out of my head.

The yellow filly before me didn't flinch at my shrieks. Her face was a mask. Full of stoicism. Stillness. Calm. All stitched tightly over her Fosterskull.

The same air-of-collected-y-ness that she'd projected throughout my entire encounter with Scribbles still hung over her. But we were alone now. So the mask finally began to crack. First, as a faint little flicker in the whites of her eyes. Next as a twitch in her temples. And then, at last...

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!" Foster erupted in a giddy squeal. "I'm soooo happy for you!" She clutched me, eyeballs wide as the sea and even wetter with tears. "Oh, and sorry! Omigosh, I'm so sorry..." she leaned back on her hindquarters, prepared to lunge a hug at me - like a snake-in-a-can ready to spring - but she stopped at the last moment. Caught herself. Rocked backwards on her rear hooves and plopped down on her flank. "I'm happy…and sad,” she said. “At the same time. Ooh! And a third thing. A third thing too! Both…happy and sad and…neither. All at the same time. Sweet Mother, what do I call it?"

Foster laughed. She sniffled. She whined. She sighed. And then, in an instant, was herself again. Neither a stodgy mask, nor a cackling mess. Just Bananas Foster. The Foster I knew. "Whew," she said. “Wow.” She panted, catching her breath.

Cliff stood in silent awe of her. We both knew that she hadn't eaten my love in the parasitical sense. That much was beyond question. But what actually had happened?

“I've smelled puppy love before,” Scribbles answered for us. “Sensed it - analyzed it. Even tasted it. But it’s not the same as feeling it. In your heart and in your hive,” she tapped her own head, which held a mind chock full of hivethoughts that I still couldn't comprehend. “Changelings feel much deeper than ponies do, believe it or not.”

Cliff raised an eyebrow.

“But it’s all very uncomplicated!” Foster was quick to add. “The love that Mother feeds us has been distilled. Digested if you will - (though I understand that that word has very different - very gross - connotations for ponies). Our love is purer of course, but only because it's been purified. By Mother.”

Foster looked longingly upward at the sewer-ceiling as though Queen Chrysalis was to be found there. Then she let out a shuddering breath. And slowly lowered her sorrowful eyeballs to me, still aglow with thin green flames.

Those eyeballs saw through me. Like my coat and hide and ribs were all made out of glass, and my heart was totally visible. Vulnerable.Exposed.

“Oh, Rose Petal,” Bananas Foster threw her forelegs open wide, and hugged me against her chest.

Her jacket was still toasty from the heat orb. And it swallowed me up like a pillow that was way too downy and soft. But when I felt her forehooves against my mane, I started weeping. Heaving. Though my eyes had already run out of tears.

Foster's touch, for a moment, felt like home. Like my skin had a memory of its own. My hide sparkled to life, reminiscing over sensations I had long forgotten. A feeling of refuge. Of sanctuary. Like when Mom used to hold me.

It wasn't a spell. (It wasn't some weird changeling illusion, or a transference of Foster’s feelings about Queen Chrysalis. Nothing like that).

Foster simply loved me - felt for me. Profoundly. And she wept too. Real tears - shed from eyes not red and raw like mine.

And when we finally released one another, everything was different.

I didn't stop feeling sorrow for Scribbles’ parting. I didn't stop feeling joy at the memory of her kiss. I didn't even stop feeling disoriented about the chaos of it all.

But I felt seen. And that, somehow, made its own kind of sense, even when very little else seemed to.

Cliff smiled weakly at us. His face seemed to flicker between offering me gentle reassurances, and flashing Foster urgent eyeballs that demanded urgent answers to his urgent-est ocular questions.

“Thees way!” Misty brushed past all three of us. Disappeared into another one of those nooks we’d hidden behind. CLONK! TWANG-A-WANG! A metal panel came loose, and rolled out into the sewer hallway, wobbling like a frisbee.

The rest of us rushed forward and gathered around.

Misty sent his orb into a crawlspace that I would never have noticed in a million, billion years.

“Ees thees way,” he repeated.

“Oh for fuck’s sake…” I squeaked. “Did our tunnel just get…tunneleyer?”

Foster patted my back reassuringly while Misty got to work wiggling his way inside.

Author's Note

PATREON

If this story, or my Heart Full of Pony essays have touched you, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

For those of you who already are pledging, seriously, and for real, thank you. Your support means a great deal to me. /]*[\

SPECIAL THANKS: As always, I would like to thank Seraphem for his tireless assistance providing feedback during the editing process, and Kkat for writing the original Fallout: Equestria story that inspired me to write Hooves of Fate in the first place.

THOUGHTS:

As I mentioned in my announcement, and as I'm sure you've noticed, this chapter is short. Really really really really really really really really really, really, really short. Even shorter than the last time that I decided to break up chapters to help move the story along.

The next release should be ready another week or two.

As for the content, I was taken aback by what happened, and I'm really pleased that I was able to learn more about how Foster functions, and the inner life of changelings more broadly

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

DEDICATION;
This chapter is dedicated to St. Joan of Arc - a teenage girl who had her own brain hornets to deal with. Listening to them changed the course of history.

593 years ago today, she paid the ultimate price, and was burnt at the stake.