Broken Wings, Scattered Dust

Come, My Black Angel

Touches of pink and orange signaled the imminent onset of dawn when I materialized in the middle of what appeared to be the remains of an exploded paint shop.  I eventually realized it was an expansive garden, and with a veritable symphony of scents to match.  Vanilla and mint were the only two I could pick out; the rest were little more than a garbled mess to my me.  Some of them stung, some were relaxing, some subtle, some potent, and none of them recognizable.  The pony next to me, however, was, and thankfully this time I remembered what last time I’d forgotten.

“Violet, right?” I squeaked.

The unicorn jumped, her eyes darting every which way until they landed on me.

“Who’s that?  What are you doing here?”

Possibly the two hardest questions she could’ve posed.  The first, because unlike Deluge, she hadn’t recognized me, so I had to lie or risk exposing myself to someone who might get me arrested.  Which would be fine, if I didn’t have to...meet this pony.  Was I supposed to meet her as me, or as SIlhouette?  Would it even make a difference?

And the second, because...well.  What the heck did meeting this pony entail?  Past the obvious exchange of names and inconsequential what’s your favorite color and what kind of music do you like.  Light talk was meaningless talk and did not comprise meeting, as far as I was concerned.

“Silhouette,“ I answered.  “And I don’t really know.“

Her horn glowed suddenly and her eyes flickered, lavender flashing a violent purple.

“Forbearer.”

Talk about transparent.  It was the second time in less than a week someone had seen right through the guise, and the first time ever it had been a pony; Deluge had only bypassed it because I hadn’t put it up.  But at least Canzonetta was a dragon, and had ancient magic to boot—she had a plethora of reasons for seeing the real me.  Violet had at least one—what was it?

Her eyes flashed several more times, but she said nothing else.

“How did you know?”

“I’m—I’m sorry!” She backpedaled in fright until her hooves bumped against cobblestone landscaping.  “I didn’t mean to—I always—it’s just—I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine,” I lied.  “I just...wasn’t expecting that.”

“I—what?  You mean Forbearer?”

I flinched.  “Yes.  A dragon gave me that name.  Not too many ponies know it.”

“You—you’ve met a dragon?”  She sounded more scared than awed.

“Yes.”

“I don’t—I mean—”

She blanched and kept shrinking, the cobblestones at her hooves banging against themselves as she kept bumping into them, and eventually she tripped over them and fell into a sitting position.  It was pathetic, really, but in spite of myself, I was drawn from my shell, compelled to help this stammering wreck of a filly.  She was older than a filly, admittedly, but she was a long ways off from being a mare.  Not that there was much of a difference.

“Hey,” I said quietly.  “It’s all right.  Calm down.”

“D—dragons killed my parents,” she stuttered.  “I th—thought I was over it, but...”

I fought back the smile creeping up on me.  “I’m no dragon.  What are you so afraid of?”

“...you.”  She looked up at me, and her eyes were wide, watery.  “I...you...you have magic on you, and it smells like the same magic that dragons have.”

“You seemed fine at the shrine...”

“It’s not the same!  Mer—Sterling and Deluge were there, they could protect me.  And th—that dragon was friendly, not like the others...”

She shuddered, but her eyes darted towards my saddlebags for a split-second, flickering that violent purple again.

“And th—that scale...”

“You can see it?”

She backpedaled again.  “I’m sorry!  I didn’t mean to—I just—”

“It’s okay,” I lied.  “I’m just wondering how you saw it.”

“I’m sorry—it just...”  She took a breath.  “You’ve seen fire before, right?”

“Um.  Yes?”

“It’s like that,” she said.  “You can’t not look at it, there’s just something...magical about it.”  Her horn glowed softly again.  “The scale’s green, from a dragon with gold eyes...”

She stopped suddenly.

“It’s from that...that dragon...”

I took a step back.  “...Yes.”

She scrunched her nose and opened her eyes.  “I’m sorry.  I’m...it’s...I can’t help it.”

I raised an eyebrow and let the gesture do the asking.  She meeped in fear and stumbled over the cobblestones, but she found her footing before she planted her rear in the dirtbed.

“It’s...it’s my special talent,” she squeaked, turning sideways so I could see her cutie mark.  A purple flower, from the side.

“It’s a violet, I think,” she mumbled, but in the garden’s stillness, her voice was easily discernable.  A quiet moment passed after, and it drew attention to something I hadn’t noticed before.

There was hardly any wind.

The garden only had a few trees dotting the surrounding fields and paths to break the wind.  In a field this open, the absence of wind was a gigantic red flag.  There was something else going on here, and it wasn’t natural, if you could call anything in a magical world natural.

“A violet?”  I repeated, somewhat belatedly.

Her head bobbed slightly, like a flower swaying in the wind.  “...I don’t get it either...”

I just stared at her.  I knew it would only make it worse, but I couldn’t help it.

“You don’t know what your cutie mark means?”’

She only got quieter.  I had to strain just to hear her over the garden’s ambient rustling.

“...No...”

I kept staring at her.

“But...you know what your special talent is...?”

“...Sort of...“

I couldn’t take my eyes off her, this little purple anomaly, this little unicorn that had the mark but no idea of where her lot in life lay.

“Amnesia?”

“I...I don’t think so...?“

More silence.

“What do you know about your special talent?”

“I...I...“  She took a deep breath and straightened up, emboldened.  “...I...see.”

Undoubtedly aware I see was not much of an explanation, she edged forwards.

“May I see your...compass?”

Why not?  The thing had no practical value to me, and little sentimental value.  Descant might’ve been the closest thing I had to a friend, besides Whimsy, but it didn’t pay to keep friends.  Not for me.  I plucked the little circle of wood from my bags and gave it to her.  She opened it smoothly, her eyes yielding to that violent, magical purple again.

“Here.”  She held the wooden frame out so I could see it.  A small splotch of her purple magic appeared on the lid, revealing a silver lightning bolt embedded in the wood.  “I can see...truth,” she said, with hesitance.  “Kinda like how your goggles filter out illusions...I can see things how they really are.  And this compass...”

She turned it, watching the needle, and from the way her neck stiffened I could tell it was still pointing at me.  She’d said truth...but not the truth.  And she could tell my goggles were engineered to pierce magical illusions—mostly Whimsy’s—just by looking at them?

“...this compass points to conflict,” she said.  “And you...you smell like dragons, and...”

She turned her violet-shrouded eyes on me, then gasped softly and reeled backwards until she tripped over the landscaping stones, planting her behind in the dirt for the second time in as many minutes.  I instinctively scooped up the compass; as useless as it points to conflict sounded, if Descant had it, chances are it had more applications that it would seem at first glance.

“...you...you...”

I just stood there, silent, watching her mentally stumble over word after word until she finally assembled something coherent.

“...you’re an...the assassin...”

I had her pinned to the ground before either of us drew another breath, pressing a hoof into her neck.  Deluge hadn’t shown any indication of wanting to run or report me.  But Violet, squirming and squeaking protests I could not hear...she would run.  She reeked of fear, was practically made of it, yet I couldn’t kill her—she was the Calamus’ muse this time.  Either I let her live and take that risk, or I kill her now.  Eliminate that threat at the risk upsetting a shrine and a dragon.  At least one of them wouldn’t hesitate to enact their vengeance upon me.

I pressed harder, ignoring Violet’s desperate gasps for breath, her flailing limbs battering my sides, her complexion slowly turning blue.  True, letting her live would risk her ratting me out.  But killing her would, one way or another, ensure my demise.  The shrine was Descant’s last link to Lucifa—if I disobeyed its will, jeopordized this job, there was no telling what he would do.  To me, or to Whimsy.

After a few moments’ suspense, I lifted my hoof and backed off.  Young she might have been, but I could see it in her eyes.  She understood exactly what I meant—and exactly what I couldn’t let her do.  She lay there for a bit before getting slowly back to her hooves, never taking her eyes off me.

“You know what I mean,” I said flatly.  “You try to run, you even think of ratting me out, and you won’t live to see another dawn.”

She drew several shuddering breaths, steadying herself.  It took a while.  A long, fierce while that I filled with perhaps too much cold staring.

“I—I won’t,” she stammered.  “You know I won’t.”

“No.  I don’t.”

“I do.  There’s...you...” She breathed in, clutching her neck.  Heh.  Her natural coat color would hide the bruise.  “I can tell, Zephyr.  I can tell you’re more than just the assassin.  Condemning you for that is ignoring all the good you’ve done.”

“That’s not a whole heck of a lot,” I said quietly, ignoring the fact that she knew my name.

She said nothing, but her slight frown gave it away.  She disagreed...oddly.  But instead of voicing her concerns, she turned to the sliver of sun that had poked over the treetops, cirrus clouds radiating outwards like a supernova.

“Ever just look at it and wonder?” she said quietly.

Well, she dropped that subject quickly.  “Look at it, sure.  Wonder, not so much.”

“Not about anything?”

“I wonder now and then why Celestia and Luna need so many guards when they’re so powerful themselves.”

“Hm.”  She rubbed her chin.  “Maybe it’s because they can still only be in one place at a time...or maybe it’s something to do with being intimidating...”

Violet went on like that for a while, naming reasons from maybe they just like them to maybe they’re just creating jobs, but I was inexplicably distracted by the unicorn herself.  It was clear that, like Whimsy, she was incredibly perceptive, but unlike Whimsy, she seemed...almost defined by fear.

Yet she...trusted me.  We hardly knew each other, but I had already lowered a couple of my usual barriers, and from the way her eyes kept darting around as she talked, it seemed probable that she wasn’t used to talking this much.  Or sharing her thoughts, really.

I could tell she didn’t know where to look—I’d seen the trait hundred times over in ponies to whom social interaction is the dark side of the moon.  Reinforcing that guess was the times she chose to look directly at me.  Not only were they random times that made little sense with what she was saying, but her eyes were always quivering.  Her normal state—in fear—was a far cry from the potent...reality-seer that became when she brought her magic to bear.

“...maybe they just have them to discourage petty crimes...”

“Violet,” I said suddenly.

She looked up at me, fear dulled, but she shifted uncomfortably.

“Vi’s fine, Zephyr,” she said.

I shuffled my wings.  “It’d be best if we didn’t use that name...”

“I’m sorry.”  She tilted her head, looking at my cutie mark.  “Jetstream?”

“Sorry?”

“You need a—a name...”

“Oh, yeah.”  It would take some getting used to, but it fit my cutie mark, and that alone would divert nearly all suspicion.  And I wouldn’t have to feign Silhouette’s timidity, either—which was a bonus in itself.  It was a fragile guise that had only survived by avoiding the spotlight—or rather, light altogether—and it would stand out twice as much if I was traveling with Violet, who was already the quiet type.  Two shy ponies traveling together with no apparent leader?  I’d be suspicious, too.

 “Jetstream,” I repeated.  “It’ll do.”

Violet nodded and turned to face a paved walkway, whose end was far out of sight.  “You know, I...I never said what I had to do here, did I?”

I shook my head.  She mumbled something incoherent in response, then looked up and realized I hadn’t heard her.

“I have to...visit a place.”

“Hm.”  I rubbed my chin.  Last time all I had to do was get Deluge to Meridian and maybe intervene, but that had involved a sky-high wall of a river, a dragon that presumably perpetuated the entire water cycle alone, a unicorn wielding void magic, a Lunar Sentinel, and heck, even a Solar Warden near the end—and now all I had to do was get chummy with Violet and get her somewhere?  Hardly.

Being on-guard had long since become a habit, but I really had to reinforce it here.  I’d let it slip with Deluge—and I was lucky she didn’t do anything once she’d learned the truth.  There probably wasn’t much I could’ve done about Violet—all I had to go on was she sees truth, but there were a million different truths with a million different ways to look at them, each; it all came down to perspective.

But which one did she see?

It was irrelevant for the time being.  She’d learned who I was already.  Her talent would only become relevant if there were things actively trying to stop us—which there would be, I had no doubts.  So best figure out how exactly seeing the truth worked before then.  One thing I’d learned early on was take every advantage you can get, and having Violet at my side—and on it—would be a sizeable advantage, indeed.

“Shall we get started?”

“I...I was waiting for you...”

Violet had moved to the beginning of the stone path.  The start.

“Right.”  I cantered over, standing slightly ahead of her.  She was still young, about Whimsy’s age, but unlike Whimsy she would not be comfortable at the fore of any group; I had to look and act the leader.  “Let’s go.”

“Wait.”

She closed her eyes again, and this time the purple magic from her horn peeled off, twisting itself into a small ring that obscured the stone path before us.  But in the center of the ring was a lavender veil of magic, and through that veil, where the path had lain moments before, was a dark flight of wooden stairs, leading upwards.

“I knew it,” I muttered.

“How could you tell?”

I held up a wing.  “No wind.”

“Mm,” she said thoughtfully.  “I think I know where we are...”

She let the circle fade and she stepped forward, onto the first step, and the instant her hoof touched the wood, the illusory garden vanished.  Gone, like dust in the wind.

We were standing on a small dais, in the middle of a tiny, nearly unlit room.  Above us was a single, dying crystal lantern.  The rest of the room, including the walls, was damp almost to the point of complete saturation, and water dripped from the far corner.  Green water.  Algae?

“It’s not much,” said Violet.  “But it’s all I have.  This is where I come when I feel bad.  A place to escape...”

“You come here?  Alone?”

“No...M—Sterling comes with...”

“Mm.  You two seem pretty close.”

“He adopted me,” she said.  “I was in an orphanage almost from the day I was born...y’know, not a very nice place...but when I’d convinced myself no one would want me, Sterling came and saw me.”  A reluctant chuckle escaped her.  “I’d never seen anyone fill out paperwork that fast.”

“He seems nice enough.”

“He is.”

Violet started up the stairs, and I followed.  There was more than enough room for us to climb side-by-side, but this was her domain; I was the guest.  There were several creaky steps, and not much to prove anyone maintained anything—or rather, maintained it well.  Something occurred to me as Violet cleared the top of the steps; she’d said the orphanage was not a nice place.  But with her talent...

“Here were are.”  Violet was some combination hostess and scaredy cat when I reached the top, but the room we’d emerged into was nearly as drab as the illusion room we’d just left.  Nearly.  The walls were still aging wood, and there was still water leaking from the ceiling, but it was far better lit, thanks to a trio of bright crystal lanterns.

And the longer I looked, the more I noticed these touches of nature’s decay had been incorporated into someone’s interior design project.  Every drop of green water that fell landed in a tiny network of canals bored into the wood; all the knots in the wood had flowing engravings around them.  Even the furniture had spiral carvings bored into every exposed surface.

“Who did all of this?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted.  “It wasn’t us, we just found it this way.  All we’ve found is this...”

She moved the table aside.  Underneath it was more carvings, but one stood out, small, but in dead center of the whole room.  The carving of a serpent eating its own tail—there was a name for it, what was it?—but what stood out was the word carved into the middle, the lettering graceful, elegant, but sharp and efficient.  Dust.

“This is a weird place to have a home,” I commented.  “Under a lake?”

“I don’t know why it’s here,” she said.  “But it was abandoned when we got here, and it works—nopony wants to come down here.”

“I can’t imagine why,” I said, and immediately after I mentally twisted my guts into painfully complex knots.  That kind of mouthiness was just begging for trouble.  Whimsy was rubbing off on me...but as much as I loved her, I had to put a lid on it.  Her habits, in my position?  It’d be like trying to get a mime to do stand-up comedy, only the mime is soon-to-be convict wanted for at least a dozen cases of premeditated murder.  Thanks, but no thanks.

“So where are we?”

“Underneath a lake in the Everfree,” she said.  “It’s by the old castle ruins.”

It was a start.  The Everfree’s horror stories alone did all the deterring for me.

“And where do y—we have to visit, again?”

“I’m not sure,” she said.  “It looked like...space.”

“Uh.  As in, outer space?”

“Yeah, with stars...”

Assuming I wasn’t supposed to help us get consumed by the cosmic void, I could only guess that space with stars—and the apparent, conspicuous lack of planets and galaxies—meant that this place might be related to the Calamus’ limbo state, where stars were souls.  Deluge had been pulled into the same state as me—it stood to reason that Violet had ended up there, too, if it wasn’t some racial filters, but it hadn’t sounded like her destination had looked like the same place as her limbo...

“So, uh...how do we get there?”

“I’m—I’m not sure...”  She took a deep breath.  “I kind of remember seeing something like it, once, but...”

I bit back my frustration and fought to keep my voice level.  Deluge at least had known where to start.

“So...”

“It was a long time ago...I re—remember a mountain...and a cave...”

Well, gee, that only narrowed it down to about a fourth of the total discovered landmasses, but I kept my tongue in check.

“Don’t suppose you have any ideas where it might be...”

She drooped, crestfallen.  “N—no...I’m sorry...”

I was caught between irritation and feeling bad for her, but however I felt was irrelevant; I had to press her for every detail I could squeeze out of her.  Anything that would clue us in on the cave’s location or tip us off of lurking dangers—but to my dismay, she said nothing else, no sudden recollection that would give me relief.

I buried my disappointment and filled the space with confidence, instead.  Violet would reflect however she thought I felt, and she was young.  Traumatized, perhaps, but still hopeful.  If I looked confident, she would be heartened.  If I didn’t...

“I’m sorry...“

Well, she would be heartened, if she couldn’t see right through whatever I decided to feign.  I felt my irritation vanish in spite of myself, melted away by the saddening vulnerability that Violet oozed just by virtue of being present.

“It’s okay,” I said, as much to reassure myself as her.  “I’ve worked with less before.  We just have to be careful.”

She nodded wordlessly, but even for me it was easy to tell she wasn’t convinced.  I leveled with her again, exposing my own eyes to meet hers.  If she ever turned on me, there would be Tartarus to pay.  She knew too much already.  But it was necessary; if I didn’t tell her—if I didn’t gain her trust—then our journey’s end could be delayed by weeks, and those were more weeks Whimsy would be exposed, without me.  She wasn’t ready...not for that...

“I mean it,” I said earnestly.  “You have a location.  I’ve gone on nothing but a piece of jewelry, and lemme tell you, that was hard.”

Which was perfectly true, in case she was still truesighting me.  My contractor had handed me the replica of a necklace and told me to hop to it.  I hadn’t asked if they knew the identity of the owner; even if they did, the less I knew—the less they told me—the harder it was to trace me.  The shorter the conversation, the better.

And in any case, confirmation I wasn’t about to walk into a trap and the payout were all I needed to know—though I hadn’t been expecting the necklace to be part of a matching set.  That’d thrown a bit of a wrench into things.

Violet looked at me for a moment—without glowing eyes—before slowly trotting over to a bare section of wall.  She pressed a hoof against it, and from the contact little tendrils of an oddly familiar lime-green magic curled outwards, little emerald rivers scurrying through the grooves of the wall’s carvings.  The magic formed a rippling ring before sinking into the wall, and the circle of wall opened like a flower in bloom to reveal a small hole.  Inside the hole sat a small golden ring, which also, oddly, looked familiar...but I couldn’t place it...

Violet plucked the ring from its perch and tied it around her neck with a length of fine chain.

“We haven’t figured out what it’s for,” she said.  “But it’s...too powerful to leave here.”

“And it’ll be safer with you?”

“N—no,“ she stammered.  “With you.“

“Well, I’m not carrying it,” I said.  A couple of loaded saddlebags was enough of a hindrance as it was, not counting Violet herself and now this...silly ring.

She didn’t seem surprised at my refusal, nor at my lack of reaction when she had confided I was to be the real protector.  I was already protecting her.  If she chose to carry that ring with her, that was her choice, not mine.

“Up here,” she said, taking another flight of stairs up.  I followed as soon as there was room; the staircase was only wide enough to take one of us at a time, and it was dark enough as is.  After a minute or so of climbing, I caught another glimmer of that lime-green magic, and soon after sunlight flooded the tunnel, momentarily blinding me once, then again when Violet exited the tunnel and I caught the full brunt of the unfettered sun.

I climbed out of the tunnel blinking stars from my eyes, but after a moment’s acclimation the fuzz around me resolved into the broken grey stone of the Everfree castle ruins.  It looked markedly different in the sunlight than the usual gloom, almost like it could’ve been cheery, once, but even in my isolated upbringing I’d heard enough tales of Nightmare Moon to know the real story.  There was no happiness to be had here.

But as I caught sight of the rising sun, I did remember there was one thing I continually wondered.  If spite and malice had transformed Luna into Nightmare Moon...what would it turn Celestia into?  Daydream Sun?  Not exactly the most terrifying of names...but then, being caught in a neverending dream was cruel, too, in a way...

“I’ve wondered that too,” Violet said quietly, and I snapped out of my reverie to find her watching me.  Not creepily, and not with glowing eyes.  Just curiously.  “If Princess Celestia ever turned, what would she be like...”

“I’d rather not know.”

“Me neither.”

She cantered out through a half-intact door frame, and I followed, this time falling into stride beside her.  I glanced behind at the tunnel we’d emerged from, but it was gone.

“Where—?”

She smiled sheepishly.  “That’s why we live down there.”

We made it to the castle’s stoop in silence without incident.  I wasn’t entirely sure what to say, or even where to start looking for the cave, and apparently she didn’t have any ideas, either.  We stood there awkwardly, letting the silence wash over us.  It didn’t last long, though; I needed to needle her for every tiny detail she could remember.  Anything that could help us.  Anything could help us.

“Was it snowy?”

“W—what?“

Well, that came out a bit too offensively.

“The mountain cave.  Was it snowing, or snowy?”

“I—I don’t remember...”

I grit my teeth.  Time to get down to basics.

“How did you see it?”

She looked confused for a moment, then she got it.  “I...I was inside, looking out...”

“What color was the sky?”

“B—blue, I think...?”  Her eyes widened suddenly.  “No, wait, I remember.  It was black, midnight.  There was another pony, a guard...he said he was Blackout...I was there, when I was smaller, and...” She shuddered.  “I rememeber he told me to come find him when I met a pony that smelled like a dragon...”

Blackout?

“Are you sure he said he was Blackout?  Absolutely sure?”

Violet stopped pawing at the ground and looked up.  “Yes...”

That name changed everything.  He wouldn’t recognize me—most of my marks had never seen me, let alone all the guards and bystanders—but he was still something remarkable.  He was the skilled kind of martial artist, not the showboating, theatrical kind.  But there had also been a fair number of rumors floating around claiming he possessed some very...unusual powers for an earth pony to have.  He was the first pony I’d encountered whom I could say that about.  The second was a much more recent...acquaintance.

“You know who he is, right?”

“Not really...”

“He’s not a guard. An ex-Sentinel.  Earth pony, top-tier martial artist, supposedly has unnatural powers.”

“Sentinel?”

“Solo operative.  Sentinel is Lunar.  Warden is Solar.  The...the phrase lone wolf came from a Sentinel, if you catch my drift.”

Far from the puddle of fear simmering inside me, she looked thoughtful.  “But me?  Why me?”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.  “Violet, you’re an anomaly.  A precocious one at that.  The ability to see truth is astonishingly powerful, far from common, and would make for a very useful asset to anyone who controls it.”

“A—anypony?”

“No,” I corrected.  “Anyone.  Your fear of dragons can easily be used against you.”

She shuddered in fear.

“I’m just calling it how I see it,” I said flatly.  “There’s nothing to be gained by lying to you.  And you’d never believe me if I did, anyways.”

She shook her head.  “That’s not how it works.  I—truesight is not the same as your goggles.  Your goggles only filter out illusions.  Truesight, like mine...it’s never specific.  Like when I look at you, I see a bird in a dormant storm.  I can smell the rain, see the clouds, feel the wind.  I can hear the bird screeching...lying on the ground with broken wings...”

She gestured helplessly.

“Sterling took me to an old castle once.  Traps everywhere.  But all I saw was danger.  I never saw the how.”

So she didn’t see specifics, only symbolics?

“Your compass,” she continued.  “I just see it pointing to lightning, which is always conflict.  And the scale—I just saw the d—its owner.  It’s frustrating!” she burst out, ramming a hoof into the ground.  “You think it’s all useful and great, but all there is is symbols, and they could mean anything!”

“Hang on.  You said I’m a bird?  How did you know I’m an assassin?”

She looked at me sadly.  “It’s a falcon.  Predatory.  I mean, I—I know what some things mean, but the truth changes all the time...and truth itself isn’t always true...”

“What do you mean?”

“I meant, there’s more than one truth...”

I tried to get it, but couldn’t.  “I’m...not following.”

“Sorry.  I did a lot of reading on this a while ago...but I think it means that what truth is depends on who’s seeing it.”  She looked around.  “See that flower over there?  What color is it?”

“Green.”

“I see green, too,” she said.  “But what if a colorblind pony said it’s grey?  Are they wrong?”

“...No, I guess not.”

“So for us, saying that flower is green is true.  For us, that’s the truth.  For them, that flower is grey is the truth.  Do you see...?”

My head was starting to hurt.  “I...I think so...”

“I think it’s...what I see is only the truth to me,” she said.  “There was a lot more in those books that I didn’t understand, too...stuff about conditional truths and...and subjectivity or something...”

I rubbed my head.

“I didn’t really get it either,” she said sadly.  “I still don’t.  And the truth didn’t even seem to be the same thing as what is true...”

“Okay stop.  Please.”

”Sorry,” she squeaked.  “It’s...kind of important to me...“

“I know,” I said.  “But it’s really starting to make my head hurt.”

”Sorry...”

I would have to learn how her sight worked sooner or later, but it seemed incredibly complex for how simple it sounded, and sadly not something I could learn quickly.  Multiple truths?  Even if the flower looked green to one and grey to another, the flower was still the same color...too bad Whimsy wasn’t here.  She loved this sort of thing.

I floated up above the canopy—not too far—and took a good look around.  There was only a few mountains relatively close to us, but my eyes were drawn to the one bearing what appeared to be a large, white-and-gold crystal growth on its side.  No, it couldn’t be...but it had to be...

“Violet,” I said hoarsely.  “That cave?”

She looked up, worried.  “What is it?”

“I...I think it’s at the top of Canterlot Mountain.”