Broken Wings, Scattered Dust

I’ll Take You Away

I looked around at the inside of the Calamus, blackness on all sides.  It didn’t feel any different from its lighter cousin, but it gave the miniature star hovering before me a nice backdrop.  And, unless there were black things also hiding in the shadow, we were alone...except for a dull silver light coming from somewhere above us.  Moonlight?

“Where are we now?”

“Same place,” Dad said.  “You’ll find out eventually, but not from me.  Someone else you know knows this place inside out.”

“Who?”

“You’ll find out whenever they decide to tell you.”

I let it drop.  Dad wasn’t known for his decisiveness, but when he made a decision, he stuck to it.  If he wasn’t going to tell me, then he wasn’t going to tell me.

“I take I’m not done yet.”

“Naturally.”

“Whimsy still okay?”

He flickered, flashing orange for just a moment.

“She is alive, unharmed, and as spirited as ever,” he said, and I knew if I could see his face he’d be grinning.  “But she has other things to do, for now, as do you.  Don’t worry, this one is simple.  All you have to do is meet somepony.”

“Who is it?”

“Somepony you’ve already met, but don’t know.”

I closed my eyes, trying to remember.  “Hm.”

“Don’t tell me you can’t do it.  I know you can.”

I stared at his star.  “Why wouldn’t I be able to...?  It’s just one pony, right?”

“Aye, but she’s a precocious little bugger.  You’ve already got your hooves full with just one of those, don’t you think?”

“Dad!”

“What?  It’s true.”

I dropped my wings.  “I know.  I swear, sometimes she won’t do anything unless she knows it’ll drive me up a wall.”

He laughed.  “That’s my girl.”

“So...”

I wasn’t sure how to express my skepticism.  After everything that’d happened over the past week or so, now I just have to meet somepony?  There had to be a catch.  But I ignored it, for the time being.  Dad never did anything without a proper reason to.  If he wasn’t telling me, I could be sure there was a good reason not to.

But regardless, my skepticism mauled whatever sane thing I was thinking of saying into something horrific that I regretted saying before it even left my mouth.  “...how’s...how’s Holly?”

There was a long pause.  I imagined Dad just staring at me with his brilliantly blue eyes.

“She’s fine,” he said evenly.  “Just...waiting.”

“For what?”

“For you to forgive yourself.”

I twitched.  “You know I can’t do that.”

“She knows you can.”

“Why does she care, anyways?”

Another long pause.

“Watching you cripple yourself is killing her.  She cried every time Canzonetta called you the ‘one with broken wings’, you know.”

“...you can watch me?”

“Nothing can hide from the stars.”  He paused, and for moment I could see the light from him brighten, beams all the whiter against the surrounding black void.  Here, without the other stars, it was easy to see his starlight’s electric-blue tinge.  “You’ve gotten faster.”

I flapped.  “That’s what the wind does.”

He paused again, and for some reason I imagined a smile flickering across his face.

“Lightning’s always been faster.”

“I know, but—”

“She only wanted you to be safe.”

“I know, but—”

“—you were curious, awestruck, mesmerized, inquisitive, jealous.”  He chuckled.  “You don’t have to tell me, Zeph.  I know you.  But whatever her concerns were, you’re still here, right?”

“...Yeah.”

There was a long moment of uneventful silence.

“You should get going.”

“There’s a lot of stuff that should happen.”

“Stop that,” he said.  “Just because it indicates an ideal scenario doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

“No, but it does mean that the ideal scenario either didn’t or probably won’t happen.”

“It’s not wrong to hope, you know...”

“I know I’m not in a position nor profession where I can get away with hope.”

“You’re hoping this whole Calamus thing will lead you to Lucifa, aren’t you?”

“That’s—that’s different.”

“How so?”

“I have no choice,” I said though I knew it wasn't true. It never was.

“You always have a choice.  You chose to accept his offer.  You could have chosen to walk away.”

“Not if I wanted Whimsy to be safe,” I argued.  “She’ll never be safe as long as she’s with me, but you know I can’t just entrust her to anyone.  Not after—”

“Calm down.  I understand.  You did what you had to do.”

“I’m waiting for the day where I do what I want to do.”

“Or night.”

I had to smile at that.  “Yeah.  It is me.  It’ll definitely be a night.”  I paused.  “And it’ll probably involve lightning.”

He fell silent, and so did I.  I had to leave and meet this pony eventually, but...

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“...I love you.”

He brushed against me once more, and again I felt all my stress and worries, all my doubts and reservations fly away like dust in the wind.  All of them except one.

“Dad?”

“Mm?”

“Why me?”

He flickered in an imaginary wind.  “Because you keep asking a question that you know has no answer.”

“What?”

“You’ve asked it so many times,” he said softly.  “But always of yourself, never of others.”

A haze entered my mind, the question coalescing out of it like some beast emerging from smoke.  A creature that had shadowed me since my first, a monster that defied definition...

“What happens after the end?”

He shone brighter.  “That’s my girl.  You see...you always call it the end instead of death.  Obviously, they are not the same.”

“I didn’t think they were,” I said quietly.

“Exactly.  You have seen enough death to know that.  Now, are you ready to continue?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

And he moved towards me.  I watched his white-blue star flicker and pulse and sink below my coat, bringing with it the relaxation of a deep breath of mountain air, fresh, clean, sharp, piercing further and further into me until it reached my heart, letting cold strands of wind waver and thread their way from there to every part of me, down to every last strand of hair.  And from there, relaxation evolved into elation, and I felt myself for the third time being slowly pulled out of this...astral dimension and back into the real world.

As the last of the abyss was replaced with ghosts of reality coalescing, along came another ghost that did not fit.  I had seen her once before, when Canzonetta had reconstructed her with moonlight, but this was no illusion.  I could...feel her presence, her soul, like she was watching.

The phantom Lucifa locked eyes with me, her semi-frayed mane swinging oddly in front of her eyes like a torn curtain, but again her mane did not ripple and waver in any cosmic wind like the sisters’.

She nodded serenely.  Just once.

I reached out...

...and she was gone.