Summer Days and Evening Flames CHAPTER 9

Chapter Nine-->

Author’s Note

CHAPTER NINE

I spent the rest of the morning filled with a feeling that was foreign to me: affection. Growing up in my tribe, I had grown used to a lack of warmth in almost all of my interactions with others; even my closest sisters and I usually gave each other a healthy amount of personal space. We liked each other, sure, but it was an unspoken rule that, unless they were a romantic pairing, griffins rarely touched each other. It probably didn’t say much good for us that it was more common to get in a fight with someone than it was to get a hug, but that was just how things were.

Even though it was strange to me, I enjoyed how it felt to know that someone cared about me. I remembered how, after my Saturday in Ponyville went completely wrong, Dash and I had ended up hugging on a cloud for a few hours. At the same time, I also remembered the feeling of my hand around her throat, and how eager I had been to bring my talons down into her for a killing blow...

I shook the violent memory from my head as best I could. It was over, Dash had forgiven me, and I had a stripe on my chest to remind me what I was capable of. Instead of dwelling on it, I tried to focus on the pleasant outcome of that day instead – I had felt a special bond with Dash.

Looking back, though, it had been more a combination of my grief and gratitude that she was so good a friend than what I felt now. Iron’s hug had the additional dimension of another rare emotion for me: hope. As depressing a thought as it was, he was one of the few good things to happen to me in my life. At any rate, our fight could have ended much worse than it had. We weren’t in the clear yet, but we were at least heading in the same direction.

By noon, I didn’t feel any less optimistic about my prospects with Iron, but the streets of Farrington had grounded my spirits about the rest of my life. Even though incidents were rare in the Residential district, keeping an eye out for lawbreakers kept me alert. Things were quiet for three hours, but everyone was staring at me again, like they had back when I was new to the job. Still, I had to admit those had been more awestruck and curious compared to... well, ‘angry’ was the word that came to mind. I tried to find a reason for it, but only thing I could think of was that word of what had happened to Lieutenant Starfall might have gotten out. I didn’t like how most of the ponies in the city seemed to know about what happened, but I mentally shrugged and decided I’d ask Iron about it when I next saw him.

When the clock struck one, I was hungry. I knew that I wouldn’t get much benefit from eating in a diner, but as soon as I thought about going for food, I remembered that I was pretty much out of money for the next week. Lunch out of the question, so combined with how I wanted to talk to Iron anyway, I headed south to visit him during my break.

When I got back to the main street of Farrington, my path crossed with another patrol – a filly and a colt. They were usually stationed in the Business district, so I had seen them around before, but we had never really spoken to each other, so I didn’t know their names. As per our usual fare, I gave them a nod and a wave. Instead of returning the gesture like normal, though, he glared at me and she gave a disgusted scoff.

I raised an eyebrow and loudly asked them, “What’s your problem?”

The filly looked back at me and replied, “Animals like you deserve a cage.”

Dumbstruck, I nearly shouted, “What?”

Her partner came to her defense. “Oh, what now? You’re going to break her legs?”

I was stuck somewhere between disbelief and anger, but I couldn’t come up with a retort. Luckily, stupefying me was enough for them and they walked away without saying another word. A few ponies had gathered to watch our exchange, so I put on an authoritative voice and told them, “Go back to your business.”

As they dispersed, I was left alone with my reaction to the other officers’ accusations. By what they said, it was clear that ponies did know what happened between Starfall and me. It wasn’t that I had really been favored among the community before the duel, but given the two choices, I definitely preferred indifference to what felt like hatred.

Either way, my public image took a back seat to a renewed feeling of shame. I had gone most of the morning without dwelling too much on what I had done to Starfall, but after someone else pointed it out, it was brought back to the front of my mind.

I started walking south again, even though my feet felt heavier than usual. I didn’t know what Iron would have to say on the matter, but being reminded of the injuries I had given to Starfall sapped the rest of the good feelings that remained from that morning. As I walked, I also remembered Stormglider, who was the first pegasus that I had mangled over a matter of pride.

It only took five minutes to get to Iron’s booth, but by the time I got there, I was completely miserable. He was looking down at the counter when I showed up, so he greeted me without looking. “Hello, Gild–” When he saw me, his lip curled with concern and he immediately asked, “What’s wrong?”

I tried to take the sorrow off my face before I asked, “Why does everyone know what happened?”

His face darkened before he folded up the newspaper that was on his counter and held it up. It was that morning’s edition of the Farrington Times, and a black-and-white picture of Starfall was glaring at me. Next to him were the huge words, “LIEUTENANT SUSPENDED FOLLOWING ILLEGAL STREET DUEL.” I took the paper from Iron and read the article. It not only condemned Starfall for the “drastic extent of his crimes,” but it also spent a sizable amount of space pointing out the dangers that griffins posed and called Iron’s wisdom into question over hiring one – or me, I guess – in the first place. It ended by mentioning how I couldn’t be reached for comment because I was currently suspended for reasons not pertaining to the duel.

When I finished, my head started swimming. The weight of the past ten minutes was growing to be too much, and my legs felt weak. My earlier guilt had been one thing, but now there was a whirlwind of completely different emotions in my head. I sat down quickly, trying to sort it all out. Almost immediately, Iron tried consoling me, “Now... they aren’t really known for being particularly nice to anyone, especially in the Guard...”

I glared up at him. “That’s a relief.” I paused to roll my eyes. “For a minute there, I thought they were discriminating against me.”

Iron opened his mouth to say something back, but he shut it. His head bobbed from left to right a few times before he shrugged and asked, “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

I took his prompt as an excuse to try and wrap my mind around the situation. First, news of my duel had become widespread throughout all of Farrington. Secondly, the news had painted me in a particularly negative light, and the opinions of most of the citizens reflected that. Third, it was... wrong... of them to just judge me like that.

Wasn’t it?

I didn’t know offhand how many violent crimes were carried out in the city, but I figured that guards made up a minority of those who were actually injured. Then again, between Sherry’s old boyfriend and the officer I had substituted for over a week for in the Artisan district, injuries seemed common enough. Still, it was a moot point: If I was trying to disprove the stereotype of griffins being a bloodthirsty, violent race, then I was doing a terrible job of it.

As I thought, my gaze had wandered from Iron; now, I turned back to face him and asked, “What do you think about all of this?”

By the surprise he showed, the question must have caught him off-guard. He collected himself and carefully responded, “They played the racial angle a little too heavily, but... it isn’t like you gave them a positive example to work with, either. I know you feel remorse for what you did, but they don’t know that. At least, they haven’t seen it for themselves, and they obviously didn’t take my word for it.”

“Your word?” I asked, feeling a sense of betrayal enter the mix. “You were the one who told them everything?”

“Yes,” he answered, unashamed. I was about to protest when he continued, “It definitely wasn’t high on my priority list, but when a reporter came to me in a bad mood because he had to come find me... I decided that it would be best to try and tell him the whole story.”

A glint of sympathy for Iron shimmered in my mind; he hadn’t wanted to make a public spectacle out of everything, even though it was probably a part of his job. I didn’t want to make him feel any worse about it, so I replied, “Okay... what now?”

“Keep your n-uh, beak, clean,” he said simply, widening his eyes at his correction. “Don’t go around joining in on fights or committing crimes... basically, what you’ve already decided to do.”

“Fine.” I nodded. I paused to take my gauntlets off before I held the paper in two bare hands and thoroughly shredded it. Iron made a small noise of protest, so I asked, “What?”

He chuckled before shrugging, “I wasn’t done with that yet.”

I looked down at the pile of fine paper strips in front of me. Inspiration struck, and I scooped up most of them and brought the mess over to Iron. I set it on his counter and offered, “Well... I made you a puzzle.”

He laughed, but it sounded more surprised than amused. He smiled as he pulled up a metal bin and brushed the paper shreds into it. “Thanks, but I wouldn’t be able to finish that on my lunch break.” I nodded my understanding and he continued, “But, speaking of food... are you free on Saturday night?”

I hesitated for a second too long, so Iron added, “My treat, of course.”

The part of me that didn’t want to leech off Iron was in conflict with my current financial situation and desire to spend time with him. I finally came to the compromise that if I really cared about it, I could pay him back when I got paid next week. At any rate, I didn’t feel any more guilt when I pointed to the ground and responded, “Sure. Here at seven?”

He shrugged, “I can manage earlier if you can. It’ll give us more daylight to work with, at least.”

I nodded. “Five, then?”

Iron nodded in reply. I caught a glimpse of the clock inside his booth, and saw that we still had five minutes left before I needed to be back. I went back to pick up my gauntlets before I walked over to his booth to put them on. When I finished, he asked, “So, are you feeling better?”

“Better?”

“When you showed up, you looked very downtrodden and confused,” he said matter-of-factly.

I chuckled at his simple evaluation, but then I thought about it; knowing why everyone was giving me looks was a slight improvement over ignorance, but the reason for it just served to add an extra level of injustice to my situation. I didn’t like it, but as I looked up at Iron, I felt confident that I could get through it. “I’ll be okay,” I answered. “Just, there’s a lot of... stuff.”

The clock tower struck the half-hour, so Iron simply nodded. “That’s good to hear. I hope you enjoy the rest of your shift.”

I thanked him with a nod of my own, and I went back to my patrol. I was careful to be as peaceful as possible for the rest of the afternoon, but I didn’t come across much to test my resolve; the ponies who still gave me a sour look when I walked past were in the minority. Most of them had already gone back to their normal reaction of just ignoring me.

After my shift, I went back to Iron’s booth to chat for a while. We talked about the newspaper article some more, but I didn’t linger there for long. That late in the day, I was uncomfortably hungry. Finally, I said goodbye to him, and was about to leave when I saw a look of slight disappointment cross his face. I berated myself and walked over to his booth. The ledge in front of the window wasn’t exactly conducive to an embrace, but I held myself up on it with my left arm and poked my head and right arm into the small room. Iron returned the hug as best as the counter in front of him would allow, but really, all we really managed to do was to cross our necks.

Which was what griffins usually did to show affection, anyway.

After I pulled back, I returned Iron’s “Goodbye.” He just smiled in reply, so I took to the skies to return home.

*        *        *

Just like Friday morning, there was only so much that a hug from Iron could do to keep my negative emotions at bay.

It didn’t help that as soon as I got back to my cave at night, Starfall’s knife was right there, close to the left wall but out in the open. Of course, thinking of Starfall now reminded me of Stormglider, which reminded me of what my father had done to Starfall’s wife, which reminded me of Starfall...

Overall, it wasn’t the best night I’d ever spent alone.

I woke up on Saturday and took the bandages off my hand. There was still a sticky residue of medicinal salve on it, but both sides of the wound were thoroughly scabbed over, and even that was beginning to fade around the edges. I noted the same about my wound on my shoulder, but I still wanted to clean off what was left over from my medicine. As I flew down to my pond in order to clean myself and get breakfast, I felt slightly better about the events of the past week; at least the physical damage was starting to heal.

I was about to fly back up to my cave, but with my medical regimen over, I had a somewhat pressing matter to address: Over the past few days, I had amassed a sizable collection of used bandages. I figured that the cloth they were made from was produced by some sort of plant, but I still didn’t think they had a place in the ecosystem of the forest. In order to take care of them, I spent the next few minutes on the forest floor, gathering dry sticks and leaves. It was steady work, and by the time it was getting difficult to carry everything, I had enough materials to start a good-sized fire.

Back up at my cave, I organized my gatherings into two main groups: tinder and fuel. I hated where I had learned how to do it, but I had to admit that building a fire was one of Father’s lessons that was... constructive, in a sense. When it came time to build a fire pit to keep everything together, though, I once again wondered why I had thrown away all of the rocks I collected for my winter fire; rolling my eyes, I set out to gather rocks from the slope of my mountain.

With everything in place, I started to vigorously scrape the thick piece of bark I had found. It was difficult work, but soon enough, I was rewarded with a small black spot that spouted a thin tendril of smoke. When I covered it with a small clump of dry grass, a small flame lit. From there, it was a matter of slowly feeding it bigger and bigger materials, and in a few minutes, I had a good-sized blaze on the edge of my outcropping. The wind was fairly calm for the altitude, and I built it on top of solid rock, so I didn’t have to watch my fire too carefully; still, I knew better than to just ignore it. I gathered up the used bandages that were in a loose pile near my armor and, with a strange feeling of satisfaction, I watched the fire flare up as I put them in.

As I used an extra stick to poke the unburnt parts of the bandages into the flames, I thought back to my duel with Starfall, which led to a more pressing memory: Stormglider. I finally figured out what was bugging me so much about her; it wasn’t just that I regretted how severely I had injured her, it was that I hadn’t told Iron about it. All that I had really told him was that there was a group of fillies at Junior Speedsters’ that used to make Dash’s and my life hell.

Worse still was the fact that I knew I’d have to tell Iron about it. We had just gotten over a problem we were having that stemmed from a lack of communication; I didn’t want to take any steps backward by continuing to keep a fairly large secret from him. Sure, he freaked the hell out when I mentioned some things that my father did, so I downplayed some of those stories, but this was my history, something that was becoming a pattern, and he deserved to know.

On a shallow level, I didn’t want to stress out our relationship any more than I already had; so close to the end of our fight, I didn’t want to throw another problem into the mix. He seemed to care about me, but I couldn’t help but feel that even that was getting close to a breaking point. However, if it ever came to light on its own volition, it would end a lot worse for me than if I just came out and told him the truth to begin with. With that realization, I suddenly empathized with Iron in terms of his dealings with the media.

It was two o’clock before I let my fire die completely. Just to be sure it was dead, I spread it all out with a stick to make sure there weren’t any still-burning embers or coals left. When I didn’t find any, I used the tips of my wings to brush the remains over the side of my cliff. I also threw away the last of my sticks that I hadn’t used. Finally, I looked at the rocks, and with a shrug, decided I didn’t like them enough to keep them around for a few months, so I threw them out as well.

My cave was now trash-free, but I almost missed the fire. Without something to distract myself with, I was alone with my thoughts. My inevitable conversation with Iron made me nervous, but I didn’t want to continue keeping it a secret, either. I spent close to two hours pondering just how I was going to bring it up to him. By then, it was almost time to leave, but I didn’t want to show up to my date smelling like sweat and smoke, so I dive-bombed into the pond that was below my cave in order to clean up, especially my ashy wingtips.

As soon as I got out of the water, I realized that bathing at my pond had been a futile effort: the sun was definitely starting to pull its weight for the summer. The day wasn’t unbearably hot, but I still felt sticky by the time I dove into the lake for a second attempt at hygiene.

When I got to the city, Iron was waiting for me under the arch. Despite the relative heat of the late-afternoon, I was still damp, and he greeted me with a confused, “Did you fall into the lake?”

I stared back bluntly, “I wanted a cave with indoor plumbing, but I settled for one with, you know, a floor.”

He looked confused for a moment, but it must have clicked, because he chuckled and nodded. “Well, what do you want to do first?”

“You’re the one who knows this city,” I replied with a shrug.

“Well, we have reservations at six... do you want to head to the pond until then?”

I bowed my head and held out a hand. “Sure.”

With our introduction out of the way, we headed to the ‘pond’, which was what Iron called the basin that we had been to before. Through some strange twist of fate, we sat in nearly the same spot as we had when I told him about the events surrounding my exile.

There were several more ponies on the bridge that day, though, and I didn’t want any of them to overhear what I had to tell Iron. I knew that by virtue of Iron having ‘reservations’, we were probably headed to a quiet restaurant later on; as I looked at the maroon filly that was sitting only two feet away from me, I figured that I’d have a better chance of privacy there, at any rate.

“Bit for your thoughts?” Iron asked.

In spite of my situation, I smiled softly; it was nice having someone who could recognize when I had something on my mind. I turned and replied quietly, “I’ll tell you at the restaurant.”

“Is everything alright?” There was concern in  his voice.

I don’t know, I thought, but that wouldn’t do anything to ease his mind. “I’m fine, just... there’s something I want to tell you.” I turned left and caught the filly’s eye, but she turned away quickly. “Privately,” I added to Iron.

He nodded. “I’d invite you to my house, then, but...”

After a long pause, I guessed in a hushed voice, “Your sister’s there?”

Iron looked back at me with confused guilt. He whispered back, “I mean, I can explain being seen with you in public as an ambassador role of sorts, but if I show up with you at home...”

“It’s fine,” I finished for him. I didn’t like that he was trying to keep our relationship a secret, but given his sister’s attitude towards me, I could understand why.

He gave me a warm smile, but we turned back to the waterfall in front of us. I tried starting up a conversation about what his sister did for the post office, but all he did was chuckle and say, “Her own business, I suppose.” I puzzled over what that was supposed to mean, but I figured that, being her brother, he was privy to some knowledge about the operations of the Farrington Postal Service that I wasn’t, so I let it go.

Finally, Iron looked behind us to the right where a clock tower was visible; we had twenty minutes until six, so he suggested, “We should get going.”

I agreed, and followed him to a new restaurant. It was decorated in the same vein as the first restaurant that we ate together at: faint lights, lots of white decor, and immaculately clean. The main difference I noticed was that there weren’t any live musicians at this restaurant; I heard music, but I couldn’t see the source of it.

A colt came to the pedestal near the doorway, looked at Iron, then to me, then back to Iron. I saw his eyebrow lift slightly before he addressed us as, “Bulwark, party of two?” Upon hearing his name, Iron nodded, and the host prompted us, “Right this way.”

We got to our table and the host left us. He was out of earshot, but we were in a nice restaurant, so I kept my voice low as I asked, “Did you see the look he gave us?”

Iron shrugged, “I’ve been here often enough for him to know who I am. He must have been expecting someone different when I mentioned I was bringing my girlfriend.”

It still felt strange to be called that, but I figured it was more of a title than anything. Plus, the more I thought about it, the more it fit: as I understood the language, that was what individuals who were dating called one another. I grinned, but I couldn’t think of any witty comments to make. I remembered what I wanted to tell Iron, and a nervous sensation grew in my stomach.

A waiter came by and took our drink orders. I stayed with the water that was in front of me, and after a moment’s hesitation, Iron decided to do the same. After the waiter left, Iron gave me his full attention. “Back at the pond, you said you wanted to tell me something?”

I sighed: it was now or never. “It’s just... over the past few days, I remembered that Starfall wasn’t the first time I broke a pegasus’ wings.”

His eyes widened and he blinked a few times. Finally, he got over his shock long enough to ask, “What happened?”

I thought of the best way to summarize the events in a way that wouldn’t be trying to weigh them in my favor. If I started lying to Iron in the middle of this, it would be defeating the purpose of telling him in the first place. Finally, I started with, “You remember my summer at Junior Speedsters’ Flight Camp, right?”

He nodded before affirming, “Three years ago your father sent you there.”

I continued, “Well, what I didn’t tell you was that Dash and I were basically miserable the whole time. I don’t remember what caused what, but we were constantly being teased, so we ended up hanging out alone a lot.”

I took a deep breath as I realized that there was an embarrassing part of my story coming up. I noticed our waiter returning, so I used it as an excuse to keep silent for a while longer. He took our orders; Iron ordered an open-faced sandwich and I simply requested, “The same.” The waiter took our untouched menus and left us alone again.

When he was gone, I swallowed my pride – or at least, I tried to get rid of the lump that had formed in my throat. “Anyway, we were friends, but we were ‘different’. I mean...” I gestured to my head and chest, and Iron nodded. “Not only that, but I found out later that even when she was alone, Dash caught flak for hanging out with me. It sounds obvious now, but... that’s hindsight,” I finished with a shrug.

“No one really treated us ‘nice’, but there were four fillies there that made our lives especially miserable.” I braced myself for what was coming next. It had been three years, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of embarrassment I felt over their teasing. I tried to keep from cringing as I bit out the words, “They joked about how we were always hanging together, calling us... dykes,” I said, almost having to bite the word out of my mouth. “Which...” I started, but I didn’t know how to sum up the depth of my hatred of the accusation.

“Is practically a racial slur by this point?” Iron offered in a somber tone.

“That’s... not as widespread as you would think,” I corrected slowly, “but yeah, that’s what it felt like.” He nodded, so I got back on track, “Anyway, the counselors didn’t do anything about it. When I went to them, they told me it was ‘all in good fun’; when Dash went to them, they pretty much suggested she find someone else to hang out with.”

“Bastards,” Iron spat hatefully.

I felt a twinge of happiness at his reaction, but I didn’t let it slow me down. “It all came to a head in late July when I woke up pink. The leader of that group of fillies dyed my head pink while I was asleep.” I paused, trying to find a way to express the frustration that I had felt. I couldn’t, so I just focused on the results. “That was the last straw. By that point, I was tired of her crap towards Dash and me.”

I felt my tone turn frigid as I recounted, “So, a week later, I tied her up with her bedsheets and dropped her from about fifty feet in the air.” Iron had been mostly listening to my story with neutral gaze, but it wavered after that detail. I was too far in to stop now, so I continued, “She landed on her back, so she couldn’t fly, and I took her sheets back to her cabin so that no one could pin it on me.” I stopped talking as a fresh wave of guilt washed over me, both over how pleased I had been with myself and over what I had learned afterwards. “About a week later, I overheard one her friends saying that she’d never be able to fly again.”

As soon as Gilda finished her story, I couldn’t save a shocked expression from crossing my face. Disturbing as her story was, I didn’t want to betray her trust by responding with anything other than sincerity, but there was a problem: I didn’t know how I felt about what she just told me. My mind was screaming at me to say something – anything, but I just sat there, stupidly, for what was now a noticeably-growing length of time.

The worst part of it was that, for the first time in our month of knowing each other, I felt scared of her. At first, I had given her the benefit of the doubt over her race, because I knew it was folly to judge an individual based on what their family or society had done, and she definitely hadn’t seemed vicious on her own. After the events of this week, though, I was beginning to question my first judgement of her.

I blinked hard to try and clear my mental hang-up: it wouldn’t get me anywhere to be afraid of what an individual could do. She fought Starfall because he antagonized her, and she was foolhardy enough to take his bait. It didn’t excuse her actions, but at the very least, it meant she was only excessively violent to those who got on her bad side. On that note, I recounted her tale from camp as simply as I could: She was ostracized because of her race, and she was bullied because she found solace in a friend.

I grit my teeth as I remembered what the authorities at the camp had done. Even though I knew that Gilda probably wasn’t the most outgoing individual in her group, to condone the actions of her bullies was... exceptionally cruel. As the leader of the Farrington Guard, I knew the importance of at least making an effort to treat every citizen fairly, not just to let them writhe in unjust circumstances.

There was a glimmer of comfort in her story, and I tried to focus on it as much as possible: She tried to go to the counselors first before things escalated. They had let her down, they had fostered an environment where it was okay to belittle someone... and she snapped under helplessness.

Still, that didn’t justify attempted murder. I shook my head and decided that Gilda hadn’t mentioned her concrete motivations for the fight, so I asked her, “What were you trying to do to her?”

She reeled slightly at the question, but she didn’t say anything at first. A pensive look glazed over her eyes as she thought about it. Finally, she focused back on me and said, “I knew enough to know that it probably wouldn’t kill her; I just wanted something that wouldn’t come back to me.”

That didn’t quite put my mind at ease. Sure, she hadn’t been intending murder, but there was something disturbing about how cunning that plan had been. I tried not to get hung up on that, but it was difficult. Eventually, I decided that I needed more information to comprehend the situation. “Have you at least tried to make amends?”

Gilda shook her head slowly. “I mean, I have thought about it a few times, but I don’t know where she lives...”

I nodded my understanding. Equestria was a huge country, so even if Gilda had a structured means of searching, finding an individual who wasn’t a celebrity would be a difficult task. If there were complications that left the filly unable to fly, her wings may have needed to be surgically removed, which would make the search virtually impossible. As much as I liked and respected Comet Tail, I had to admit that if I hadn’t known her before and during her injury, the only indication I would have that she was a pegasus was how little she weighed in comparison to an earth pony.

At any rate, there wasn’t a national registry of disabled ponies, so Gilda didn’t have much, if anything, to work with. It was troubling, as I didn’t want her to continue on without making amends, but given the circumstances, I had to admit that an apology wasn’t likely to be possible.

Eventually, I released my thoughts with a sigh. Gilda had only been... fourteen or fifteen when this all happened. I remembered that, when I was that age, I had been laden with the hassle of finding housing for two ponies that I could afford on a miner’s wages. Still, I had had my own problems with an authority figure that led to that situation, and the more I thought about her counselors’ betrayal, the less I could completely blame her for her actions. She was repentant for her part, though, even though she couldn’t follow through on the sentiment.

It was that and that alone that kept me from walking away right then and there.

Her repentance helped me to look past her situation somewhat, but I wasn’t going to overlook it entirely. As much as I appreciated her effort to open up to me, the fact remained that she had kept this hidden from me; I didn’t want something even worse coming up in the future that would end up causing us to have wasted each others’ time in the first place.

Across the table, she was still staring at me resolutely. I asked her, “Before I let you know what I think... do you have anything else that you’re not telling me?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes.”

Ten seconds of silence later, I wanted to hit myself in the forehead. Instead, I kept a straight face and reiterated, “I mean, have you made any other... large mistakes like this?”

Her eyes lost focus for a minute; when she came back to reality, she looked down at the stripe across her chest. It was angled like a ‘V’, and save for a few white tips of feathers that were beginning to show through, it was the same golden-brown color of her wings. From what she had told me, and my own observations, I knew it was to cover some bloodstains from her friend Rainbow Dash. I had just assumed that it had been a situation where she had hurt her friend before coming to her senses; after what she had just told me, I was concerned about just how badly she had hurt her friend.

I shook my head slightly to get the thought out. Ponyville was a pet town of Canterlot; even if it was several hundred miles away from Farrington, news of a griffin attack on Equestrian soil would have traveled that far by now, if it didn’t lead to all-out war. Her father had been playing a dangerous game by ordering her to commit such an act, but I had to admit that I could see where Gilda got her sense of cunning from; even if he had any ulterior motives in casting her out to send a message, I didn’t have the slightest idea what they were.

As she reminisced about... whatever it was she was thinking about, our waiter came by with our meals. We both thanked him in turn, but neither of us touched our plates. Instead, she pointed a talon at her stripe. “How much do you know about this?”

I looked around before leaning in to speak even more quietly than we already had been. “I know whose blood is under that dye, if that’s what you’re asking me. As for the circumstances, I can only assume that it was a mistake you caught in time before killing your friend.”

She turned away from me in shame, which was rare enough in its own right. She was fighting back tears, though, and I figured I had gone too far. “I’m sorry... I didn’t mean for that to sound so harsh.”

She turned back to face me with a subdued grin. “It’s not that, it’s just... it made me think back to that day.” Her voice turned distant and empty as she continued, “I mean, when I saw myself doing that to my friend, I... thought I lost the only thing I had left.” She fought for the remaining words, “I... tried to end it... after that.”

My stomach twisted into a knot as soon as I realized there was merit to one of my deepest fears about Gilda: she was suicidal. Hiring her, I had put it out of my mind based on her long-distance correspondence, the fact that she had returned from a trip, and – I sighed as I realized it – denial. I had wanted her to be mentally stable, so I had rushed into the situation without as much as a second thought.

I ended that train of thought abruptly; during the interview before her first week, she seemed worried about long-term consequences for a bar fight. She had squared the damages away with the owner, so there wasn’t anything to bring the courts into over, but the point remained: if she had been planning to kill herself, she wouldn’t be worried about an inconvenience such as jail. Also, during her first week, she had painted the portrait of a sharp-minded individual who was cynical, not depressed.

I gave up trying to wrap my mind around whether or not I could have known, back then, what her mindset had actually been. Again, I didn’t want to keep her waiting for my response, so I thought about what to say. I finally settled to look to the future instead of the past. “What would you do tomorrow, if you went back to Ponyville and all of the events that happened that day repeated themselves?”

Anger flared in her eyes, “Why do you think I have this?” she hissed as she gestured to her stripe. “Some sort of fashion statement?” She took a deep breath and calmed down before finishing, “It’s so every day, I can remind myself of what I almost did.” A brief pause passed before she added, “And no, before you ask, it didn’t help when it came time to deal with Starfall, so I guess that’s just another way I screwed up over every–”

“Gilda,” I interrupted her. Hysterics didn’t fit her. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes widened slightly as she waited for me to continue. “I know that you wouldn’t hurt your friend again. I meant, what if everything that led up to that situation happened again?”

“Oh,” she said, looking down at her sandwich. A few moments of silence passed before she looked back up at me. “I guess I’d just come back here. To my patrol and... you.”

I pondered over that answer for a while. On one hoof, I didn’t like how fragile her mental state seemed to be. I realized that, if I were so inclined, I could take both of her coping mechanisms away from her in an instant. Then where would she be?

I recoiled from that thought, and I hoped to Celestia that it didn’t show on my face. I knew better than to think about power in terms of its absolute potentials. I did have those authorities, but unless I needed to, there was no need to act on them.

Also, I realized it was foolish to blame her for being part of a vicious cycle. Just because she attempted suicide when she had nothing left to live for wasn’t a good enough reason to take away the two things in her life she had gained since then. I knew better than to feel trapped by the fact that firing her might push her back to that mindset; based on her actions that I had seen for myself, there was little evidence that she still felt that same way.

The only danger I truly felt was a concern that she would become obsessed with being a guard. At the same time, her zealous self-segregation from Farrington acted as a check against that: she still held herself to her tribe’s standards, so the idea of her turning into a radical enforcer of Farrington law was silly at best. In order for her to become that, she’d first have to join our society in the first place, and that would be another counter to her feelings of emptiness and desperation.

I was impressed. Whether on purpose or by accident, she was coping with her demons in a fairly effective manner. I wasn’t thrilled that she had them, but then again, for the second time that week, I came to the conclusion that if she could work past them, I could be there to help her with it.

Across the table, she was wearing an anxious expression, and I regretted how long it had taken me to come to my solution. Still, I had needed to make an inform – no, I needed to speak now. “I, uh,” I stumbled, “I won’t lie: your second story worries me more than your first.” She looked utterly dejected, so I continued, “But just because you find desperation when your life turns empty... doesn’t mean you deserve to lose the things you do have. You know you have this problem... well, to be blunt, you know you have several problems, but my offer still stands: if you’re willing to work on them, I’ll be there for you while you do.”

At that, her eyes brightened, and the hint of a grin formed at the side of her beak. I felt bad that she couldn’t be entirely happy, as she had been the previous morning, but it was understandable: even though she was working on it, she was still a troubled individual.

With that settled, we finally started to eat our dinner. It wasn’t as hot as I would have liked for a forty-bit sandwich, but as I watched Gilda glare at her meal before abruptly closing it to eat it like a normal sandwich, the warmth I felt more than made up for the lackluster meal.

After we finished our food, I paid and we walked out into the street together. The sun had almost completely set and the street torches had already been lit. There wasn’t much left we could do before nightfall, when the dark made it even more dangerous for her to find her cave, so we headed south. It was a slow process for her, because without her gauntlets, she had to walk gingerly on her palms – especially the right one. She wasn’t limping severely, but she definitely favored her left palm.

As we walked, she asked me, “Do you...” before pausing.

“What?”

“I mean,” she started over, “all my life growing up, I didn’t want to be anything like him. But... ever since I came to pony society, I keep doing things like Starfall, or Stormglider... or even Dash.”

“Did your father ever show any sort of remorse for what he did to Comet?” I asked her, even though I was practically certain of the answer.

Sure enough, she scoffed, “Remorse? He was a celebrity for at least a few months. Not like there was much else going on, I guess, but still...”

I tried to put her mind at ease on that front. “And that’s a key difference between you two, isn’t it?”

She didn’t say anything, but a quick glance told me that she seemed relieved.

We finally reached the archway of the southern gate. It was darker in there than in the street proper, but the torches there cast us into a flickering, orange glow. I started to say goodbye, “This has been quite the week, hasn’t it?”

Gilda seemed downtrodden as she replied, “Yeah.”

I wanted to tell her that she should cheer up, and that as far as we were concerned, she was doing the right thing. I couldn’t find a way to vocalize it properly, though, so I settled on, “I appreciate you telling me everything.”

She nodded slowly, almost hesitantly. “It was... tiring, I guess, keeping everything to myself.”

“I can’t promise you that everything will get better overnight,” I consoled her, “But I’ll help you through it all until it does.”

I had about a split second’s warning before she was wrapped around my neck. Once the shock of her abrupt hug wore off, though, I brought a hoof up to return the embrace. As my left hoof supported the bulk of our mass, I was grateful that we weren’t dressed in our guard’s armor; that would have been incredibly heavy.

As she pressed deeper into my neck, I was thankful for the absence of armor for another reason entirely: though she would never take it as a compliment, she was incredibly soft. Even in our embrace, I didn’t know where her talons were. She began trembling, and for a happy moment, I thought she was purring like a house cat; as I felt the sharp inhale of a mourner, though, I recognized it for what it was, and I stood there patting her on the back until she was finished.

I didn’t judge her for crying after the week that she had had; in fact, it only made me aware of how deeply I cared for her. She was broken, by her father and by her banishment, but that didn’t matter now. I nuzzled the side of her neck, trying to tell her without words that everything would be okay.

She broke out of the hug first, and I let her back down. I didn’t want her to go, but she had her home to go to, and I had a bigoted sister to appease with secrecy. The words hung heavily in my throat before I bade her, “Good night.”

“Good night,” she responded. Her voice was quiet, but for the first time that evening, I thought I heard happiness in it. If not that, then at least she had found peace.

She took off for home, and I watched her fly away until she was just a speck on the horizon. When she had completely faded into the first stars of night, I turned around and, with an inner peace of my own, headed back to my home.

Monday morning before my patrol, Sherry handed me a scroll before I left the citadel. I broke the seal with a talon and unfurled it; inside was a formal listing of my crimes and their punishments that I had to serve: five hundred bits, an apology, and a calendar. The dates on the calendar were either red, blue, or black, but there wasn’t any other instructions for how to read it, so I asked, “What’s the schedule for?”

My sergeant looked up at me, “That, Officer Gilda, is your schedule for community service. Red days, you’re ‘volunteering’ at the hospital, blue days, you’re at the orphanage. Those kids are always happy to have an upstanding member of the Guard spend time with them, but I think they’ll make an exception in your case.”

I bristled at the insult, but I didn’t have anything to gain from back-talking Sherry. At any rate, she seemed to be in a much better mood towards me than she had been on Wednesday, so I figured it could just as easily have been a friendly joke. I handed her my bag and said, “I want this back, but there’s over five hundred bits in here.”

Sherry winked at me, “We’re the Farrington guard, not the tax collector’s guild. You won’t get robbed.” She took a moment to examine my coin sack and admired, “I can see why you want this back. What are all these little etchings about?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. Probably the tanner thought they looked cool. There’s no widespread cultural meaning behind them.”

She nodded before changing the subject with my assignment, “Anyway, you’re in the Residential district today, so hop to it.”

I re-rolled the scroll and stuffed it down the front of my armor in the hollow part where my coin bag usually rested. With that taken care of, I left the citadel and headed northeast to the Residential district. Within ten minutes, I was alone with my thoughts again, so I started mulling my punishment over. I was not looking forward to being a surrogate mother for a bunch of foals for the next two months. I had always wanted to start a family of my own, true, but that had involved my children, not those of some dead or imprisoned pony.

When I realized that I was being condescending to orphans, I felt a pang of guilt. Those children probably spent most of their lives being miserable. True, they were alive, which was better than how unwanted cubs fared in my tribe, but I figured they would at least appreciate a good storyteller. At least, I remembered how, when things turned from bleak to worse, it had always been like a breath of fresh air to escape into my tribe’s legends and mythologies.

With a grin, I wondered just how stringent the guidelines were for that sort of thing, and if I could get away with substituting some of my stories instead of whatever they had planned for me. As soon as the idea planted itself in my head, I went with it, and I got over my initial reservations over my punishment. I thought that I might even end up enjoying it.

When my lunch break came around, I didn’t even have my money bag if I wanted to spend what little bits I had left, so I visited Iron again. I asked him about my plan, but he only shrugged and said it was up to the children’s caretakers. After that, an awkward silence passed, so I asked him what was the matter.

He gave me an apologetic look. “You’re not supposed to enjoy the punishment, Gilda. I know how important your culture is to you, though, so once again, I’m having a hard time being objective over this.”

“Thanks,” I said, not bothering to hide my disdain for his reaction. I knew he was right, on some level, but I didn’t need to be reminded that staying an extra three hours in the city, against my will and without being able to eat, was a ‘punishment’.

He raised an eyebrow. “You asked.”

“Okay.” I nodded at him. I stood up and continued, “But, I think I’m going to go send a letter.” He made a sound to speak, so I added, “At the citadel.”

He nodded, then waved good-bye, and I returned it with a bow. As I walked away, I wasn’t really angry, but more disappointed that he wasn’t completely eye-to-eye with me on this. Either way, I supposed it didn’t matter; he’d either come around or he wouldn’t. With everything else that had happened, it seemed like a small thing for us to disagree on, and I was fine with that. If it was a bigger problem than he had said, then it was his fault for not mentioning it in the first place.

I felt my stomach growl, and I found myself wishing that I could eat something, even if it was only a temporary fix to last me until the end of my shift. I would be ravenous by then, but I shook the complaint from my head; there was nothing I could do except to put up with it.

When I got to the citadel, I paused for a moment. Mailing a letter had been an excuse to get away from Iron, but then I remembered that it had been almost two weeks since I had heard back from Dash. I felt a bit of sympathy for Dash; she seemed really torn up when she saw what not answering my letters had done, but now that I was on the other side of things and had more to look forward to than my next meal and her next letter, I saw how easy it was to lose track of time.

So this is what it’s like to have a life, I mused as I walked through the door. I passed through the doors to the Guard’s quarters, and walked over to Sherry’s desk. She looked up and said, “We’re not that fast, Officer. Your bits are still being processed.”

“That’s fine,” I answered, and she chuckled. Instead of pressing the matter, though, I asked her, “Uh, actually, I was wondering if I can send a letter here?”

“Sure, just don’t flash me,” she shot back without skipping a beat. I glared at the wall behind her while she chuckled to herself again and slid a sheet of paper over to me. She gestured to the cushion on the other side of her desk, so I sat down. I took off a gauntlet, grabbed a pen from the ‘visitor’ side of her desk, and started writing:

Hey Dash

Thanks for your letter. Things worked out okay with the captain and me, or at least, we’re dating now. So, here’s hoping that doesn’t end up a horrible mistake.

I thought about everything else that her letter had contained, so I added:

Also, thanks for the birthday wishes. At least one of us remembered this year, right? I’ll make sure to do some flips or something for you when the day rolls around.

Things are kind of crazy with the guards right now. Long story short, the captain’s best friend’s wife got attacked by my father. She’s... alive, but her husband (who is also a superior officer in the guard) hates me on the grounds that I’m a griffin. He challenged me to a duel to the death over something completely unrelated, but it ended in a stalemate right before Iron came and threw us both in prison. That’s why this letter is coming from the Farrington Guard’s headquarters.

No, not really. I just got banned from the post office for flashing the clerk there. You remember that story.

In all seriousness, I did dodge a prison sentence over everything; instead, I’ve just got to read to orphans for a few months. Fun times.

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on this past week. How are things going with you?

~G.

I reread what I had written, and I had to suppress a laugh; Dash was going to think I was some sort of deviant. The not-laughter died away when I realized that, by the letter of the law, I was a criminal.

Anyway, the paper Sherry gave me was too thick for me to roll it into my usual scroll. Instead, I folded it like Dash always folded her letters, then I wrote her name on the outside. Sherry grinned and handed me an envelope, and I glared off into space again before I put my letter inside it and wrote Dash’s name again, this time on the outside.

“There you go,” my sergeant congratulated me. After a pause, she added, “What happened to your hand?”

I looked down at the now-fading scab. I could already see the lighter-colored patches of a scar around the edges, so I was going to have a reminder of my duel with Starfall for the rest of my life. Sherry already knew some of the details of the fight, so I told her the truth: “Starfall threw his knife at my head, but I caught it with my palm.”

Sherry hissed in empathetic pain before saying, “That’s probably not the best way to block a knife.” I nodded in agreement, and she asked, “Why didn’t you wear your armor to the duel?”

For that response, I omitted the part about the Sternwolf. Even a week later, I was beginning to doubt if I had really seen that or if it had been part of a dream, so I gave her my decision that was the result of the encounter: “I thought he wouldn’t attack an unarmed target, and I wanted to talk with him about everything instead of fighting.”

Across the desk, Sherry nodded and gave me a sincere look. “Well, it’s a good thing you did. Just ask Ex-Lieutenant Starfall how well breaking the law in-uniform worked out for him.”

I couldn’t think of an adequate response for that, but looking at the clock on the wall, I saw I was running over my break. “I need to get going,” I said.

“Dismissed,” Sherry replied before turning back to the pile of forms in front of her.

The rest of the afternoon was uncomfortable for me, because I didn’t even have dinner to look forward to when my shift was over – that day was a ‘red day’, so I needed to go to Farrington General from 5:30 to 7:30. Seven passes of the Residential district later, the five o’ clock bell chimed, so I returned to the citadel to be dismissed by Sherry.

She mercifully kept it short when I got there; she handed me my now pitifully-light coin sack and told me I was “Dismissed” again.

If there was one lesson to learn from the Schnelfluge, it was to never be around pony foals when you were hungry. I took that advice to heart and stopped into one of my usual diners on the way to the hospital; the usually-friendly waitress seemed strained to see me, but she took my order in a polite-enough manner.

She could have slammed my potato down on the table and called me a bitch, for all I cared. I was hungry.

I paid the three bits for my meal, and after a moment, decided to leave a fourth coin on the pile. Ponies hated me because of what I did to Starfall; that was their prerogative. I wasn’t going to win them back by being an easy target for their hatred, though. As Iron put it, I needed to ‘keep my beak clean’, so I played nice.

Sure enough, the waitress came over to my part of the raised bar, looked at the coins, and gave me a warm, “Thanks.”

I nodded before I went back out into the street. Farrington General was a good distance north still, but I had ten minutes to check in there, which was more than enough time if I didn’t dawdle.

As I walked toward the hospital, I wondered what was in store for me there. I was nervous, I admitted, even though it was stupid to be afraid of a room full of sick children. I mean, unless they were contagious, what could they do to hurt me? At any rate, I pushed the worry out of my mind; it was pointless, and the longer I thought about it, the closer I got to the hospital anyway. With or without worrying, I was about to discover firsthand how things would turn out.

She took my knife. And he helped.

I didn’t mind being confined to as cheap a hospital room as I could probably no longer afford. Those white walls were a prison, but given the insanity that was happening outside of them, I almost preferred a respite from it all.

I also didn’t mind being alone for ten hours at a time. The nurses were bubbly and inane and provided no insightful conversation at all. Given a choice between their stupidity and complete silence, I much preferred the latter. Comet came to visit a few times, but those rare breaks of relative comfort came at a price I wasn’t sure I wanted to pay.

The strangest visitor, by far, had been Sergeant Justice. I seemed to be the only one in the guard who found it exceptionally cruel to call an alcoholic ‘Sherry’, but those days, I was the minority on many points of reason. At any rate, she pulled herself away from the bottle long enough to come visit, but after five minutes, I flat-out told her that I had no interest in her company; thankfully, she was understanding and left.

For the first two days of my hospitalization, the Farrington Times had been enough to keep me entertained during the long droughts between when my wife showed up. After reading their yellow bastardization of events, I had searched through the small plastic bin that held the remainder of my belongings that I was in possession of when I was admitted. One of my officers – well, an officer that formerly served under me – had taken away my lieutenant’s armor on Thursday morning. That had resonated with me on a deep level, but I could understand.

However, on that Friday morning, when I couldn’t find my knife, I remembered who I had left it in. I tore open my shoulder when I threw the bin against the wall, which elicited a ‘stern talking to’ from my nurse, but as the doctor came and magicked some thread through the wound again, I decided that I couldn’t care less. That knife had been mine for almost a decade, from before Comet was attacked, and it was one of the few things I had left in my life that was reliable.

I didn’t know which of them was more to blame for the lack of its return, but I figured that they both had conspired to keep it, for whatever reason, so it didn’t matter to me.

With a deep breath, I tried to put it out of my mind. When that didn’t work, I sat up, turned around, and beat my pillows into a better shape. It was childish, but when I lay back down, I had to admit that either through comfort or a release of aggression, I felt slightly better.

I lay back down, glad that I had figured out a way to position my pillows so that I wasn’t lying directly on my wings’ casts. It wasn’t the most guarded position to lie in, but being able to see the doorway was better than lying prone and waiting for someone to come in to break the silence of my boredom.

And I was bored. Without the newspaper to read, I had spent most of the weekend glaring at the ceiling. It was that, more than anything, that let Comet change my mind about bringing our children to come visit me on Sunday afternoon. I supposed that there was also the matter of how she was able to leave them in care and come visit me, though; when I learned who she left them with, my first reaction had been to tell her to stop coming altogether. She persisted, and my desire to keep my family my own combined with the sheer boredom of being alone, so I finally agreed.

My children deserved better than to see their father lying uselessly on his back, but I supposed it was weakness that got me into that situation in the first place. When they saw me, though, they didn’t seem to care why I was there or that I was injured – they were just happy to see me. Even though that alone brought on a shroud of guilt, those four hours had easily been the happiest ones I had since coming to the hospital.

Today, however, they were attending a friend’s birthday party, so I had precious little to look forward to except for recounting the one hundred and twenty-seven square tiles that formed the surface of my room’s ceiling while I waited for my spouse to visit.

At half past six, I was beginning to wonder if my wife was just going to forgo visiting me altogether. I started to shrug before pain shot through my back, causing me to grunt as quietly as I could to avoid drawing a nurse’s attention. When the pain subsided, I thought back to my wife, and guessed that she was probably taking care of things around the house. I wasn’t the best about doing chores, I knew, but I at least made a good effort to help. Maybe now that she was alone, she was finding it difficult to keep on top of everything.

Not for the first time that day, I cursed the griffin race for what they had done to her. I had discovered the only thing worse than rage was impotent rage; after ten years of keeping myself fit and ready for a fight, one of their children had defeated me. Granted, I had mostly been training to defend my family and to put criminals in their place, but it didn’t help me to know that for all my misgivings against them, I was utterly powerless to do anything about them.

I was mulling over just how much I despised their filthy race when out of the bottom of my eye, I saw the silhouette of someone standing in the doorway. I figured that Comet had finally come to visit, so I sat up in my bed to foster conversation.

Instead of my wife in the doorway, it was Iron.

We stayed like we were for a while: I on my bed, him at my doorway, both of us staring at one another. I felt a mix of emotions on seeing him: understandable rage at his betrayal, and sorrow that things had come to this point between us. He at least had enough tact to not be wearing his captain’s regalia, but I still had to note that, for one of the few ponies I considered a friend in that city, he had sure taken his time before this visit. Finally, I couldn’t stand the silence anymore. When I spoke, it was my anger, not my grief, that chose my words. “Come to take anything else from me, or is this just a gloating visit?”

He didn’t react to my words, save for a small frown that formed. “Is that how things are going to be between us?” I didn’t answer his question, so after a long pause, he shook his head slowly before continuing, “I came here to ask you about your position in the Guard.”

It was... refreshing, at least, to know that he hadn’t come to visit for friendly purposes. “I’ve read the paper; looks like you’ve already made up your mind. Who was it that got my old position?”

“Scales, but he’s only there temporarily until–”

“Until what?” I hated his manner of beating around the bush. “Until you find a chimera that puts out and put it in the guard?”

I had hit a nerve. He fought to keep his anger off his face, but I saw it in his eyes. “At least she wouldn’t go around attacking subordinate officers and defacing the name of the entire Guard by her actions.”

“Only her superiors,” I spat back.

Iron took a deep breath before responding. “Do you hear yourself? How can you possibly remove all blame from yourself in this situation?”

“Apparently, it’s just a matter of sleeping with you. Too bad for my job I’m happily married.”

In response, Iron scoffed. “Maybe nine years ago.”

I grit my teeth at the truth, truth he had no right to talk about. “Get the hell out of my room.”

Starfall was snarling at me, but I already knew I had gone too far. There would be no civil discussion with him after what I had just said, so I turned and walked down the hallway.

This evening keeps getting better and better, I thought with a sigh. It started when I disappointed my sister by telling her that I was going to eat on the way back from the hospital instead of at home with her; she was welcome to come along, but of course, she didn’t want to. Then, my girlfriend got angry with me because I didn’t think she should be enjoying a punishment; she left my booth in a rush to mail a letter right after, and I hadn’t seen her since. I didn’t know where she went off to, so I could only assume that she had left the city quietly in order to avoid being seen by me. Then, when I went home to change out of my armor, Maxie assumed that meant I had cancelled plans to visit my friend in the hospital, so I disappointed her again... and now, Starfall had completely deluded himself into a state of innocence by blaming me over everything that had happened.

I reached the stairwell and began descending to the ground floor. My friend’s accusations struck deeply because they at least began in reality. Before Sherry stepped in to help us, I had been struggling with objectivity, or at least, trying to determine if I really could be objective. A week later, I could see that I had clearly chosen Gilda over him that night, and I cringed when I remembered how easily and angrily I had thrown him away from the scene. Now, through a mix of his delusion and her... cultural identity, was the best way I could put it, neither of them was speaking to me.

My stomach growled to remind me that it had been several hours since I had eaten lunch. I decided to eat at the hospital cafeteria, partly from a desire to be left alone and partly because I didn’t want to toy with my sister’s psyche by showing up to a meal when I had already told her twice that I wasn’t going to. I exited the stairwell and checked the sign on the wall: my destination was to the left, so I turned and began the process of navigating the hospital on an intersection-by-intersection basis.

I grew weary as I navigated the maze of sterile, white hallways. I supposed it was true that no one liked being in a hospital, but ironically, I wasn’t put off by the decor. Instead, I was starting to wonder when and if things in my life were ever going to settle down after what had happened last Tuesday.

As I passed a doorway, I thought I heard a familiar voice coming from within. I turned around to check, and sure enough, there was Gilda, still in her Guard’s armor, sitting off to the side of the room and surrounded by a group of six foals.

She noticed me staring at her, and her pause caused the children around her to look at me as well. I immediately realized that she hadn’t been avoiding me that evening, but had probably headed straight to the hospital to start her community service. Sherry had been the one who put together everything involving her punishment, so I hadn’t even known that she was starting so early.

With one mystery solved, I smiled and walked over to her small audience. I took a seat behind a pair of foals, and Gilda continued her story.

“So, anyway, Ing continued on his journey. But his wings got tired of flying, so when he came across a griffin who lived alone by the river,” she stopped narrating to scowl, “he, uh, paid her, and then left with her boat.”

As I listened to her story, I found it interesting to hear how widespread griffins were in her story. Presently, there were only the two tribes to the north (as she had pointed out) and the port city of Elpithasus.

I supposed ‘port city’ was a tad generous; it was a tiny city, and was really more of a stopping point for Equestrian merchants if they wanted to hire extra security for a voyage. Elpithasan griffins got all of their industrial supplies secondhand from Stalliongrad, and the few alchemist unicorns that set up shop in Farrington preferred to gather their own reagents in the Everfree instead of importing from a city that was almost three thousand miles away; it took a good week to get there over road one way. Because of that, there was virtually no contact between our two cities.

In Gilda’s myth, though, griffins were widespread enough to have several cities, at least enough where there were multiple settlements for Ing to head for. If there was truth to the story, then it was disappointing to think how far their culture had fallen, and for the first time, it struck me just what she was referring to when she mentioned a disparity between the present and past for her race. I had previously understood what she was talking about, on some level, but paradoxically, hearing her story made the reality... real to me.

The story lasted over a half an hour longer, with Ing facing various trials on both sea, land, and in the air. Although she stumbled a few times over what I guessed where risque or excessively violent parts that she didn’t want to recount to foals, when she hit her stride, her narration added a level of enjoyment to the story. By the end, Ing found what he wanted: He had left on a journey to find wisdom, and ended up discovering agriculture.

When it was over, the foals all began chattering excitedly; they liked it as much as I did. A few minutes later, a nurse came over to take them back to their rooms for dinner. With what I recognized as childlike disappointment, they said goodbye to Gilda, and five of them walked away. The little girl that stayed behind didn’t say anything, but instead, she hugged one of Gilda’s gauntlets. I felt a twinge of panic as I saw the surprise on her face, but she recovered and pat the foal on the head a few times with her other hand before the nurse came back over to collect the sixth child.

When we were alone, she stood up and tried stretching her back, but I heard a quiet hissing noise as she apparently found a physical limit to the mobility of her custom-made armor. “Problems, officer?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“I think he made this for walking, not sitting,” she said, looking at her armor. Her gaze came up to meet mine again. “You want to go?”

I was taken aback at the abruptness of her tone, but I figured she wanted to get moving for her legs’ sake. “Sure,” I agreed.

We walked to the exit of the hospital in complete silence. I stole a few glances at her in the hallway, and she seemed disturbed rather than angry, which I supposed was better for me. I knew she had something on her mind and I was still hungry, so I asked her, “Do you want to eat dinner?”

She hesitated, “No, I’ve... got to save what I’ve got for the rest of the week.”

Right, I thought, her fine. I didn’t want to subvert her punishment by making it easier, but at the same time... I cared about her enough that I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t think that she’d accept charity two dates in a row, so I offered, “If you would like, I’ll pay for your meal in exchange for more of your myths.”

Her glare told me that she didn’t go for that, either. “Don’t trivialize my culture,” she sneered at me.

I waved a hoof in surrender. “I wasn’t trying to...” It was a losing battle, I knew, and I was too hungry to argue with her about eating. I tried to figure that one out, but instead, offered the compromise, “Do you want to go to the park, then?”

She looked up at the sky before shrugging. “Sure.” It wasn’t the most enthusiastic I’d seen her, but it would at least give me a chance to learn what was really bothering her.

The Artisan district wasn’t the safest place to walk through at night, but it was still early enough that we didn’t have to worry too much about running into a criminal. Then again, we were both members of the Guard, so I doubted there would be much danger for us if we did. After a few turns through the various streets that housed shops and apartments, she commented, “Oh, this park.”

I wondered if she had thought I was talking about the reservoir-turned-pond that we frequented. “Er, yes... did you want to go to the pond instead?”

She passed me an intrigued look. “I don’t really care.” After a pause, she added, “This is where I chased that one criminal through.”

I smiled; she was beginning to have memories of her own. I had to admit she had started her career in an extremely successful manner, too. The Farrington Times had apparently forgotten the three times that I mentioned how she had single-handedly apprehended Fast Hooves during her second week in the guard. At any rate, Ms. Hooves had been a notorious thief who apparently was completely separate from her brother’s nonexistent crime syndicate; during interrogation, their relationship basically boiled down to her stealing valuables and him being an upstanding citizen that we couldn’t prove had broken any laws.

Gilda hadn’t been the first officer to chase her down, but she had certainly been the only successful one. I didn’t want to believe it was only because she was a griffin, but at the same time, I had to respect that she was hardy enough to make better use of a situation than other officers might have been. None of the ponies in the Guard were weak or lethargic by any measure – even Sherry could hold her own in a fight when she got out from behind her desk. At the same time, Starfall had probably been the most enthusiastic guard, in terms of combat training, but Gilda had nonetheless beaten him in a fight.

We entered the park and found a bench to sit on. As usual, she sat on my right; I didn’t know whether that was a part of griffin culture or something that I was unconsciously doing to her. Either way, she remained silent as we watched several ponies pass us. Finally, I turned to ask her, “Is everything all right?”

She looked at me with an expression that was mostly blank, but the side of her mouth where her beak met her face was quivering. She removed even that subtle tell before answering, “You were right, I guess. This afternoon, when you said I shouldn’t have tried to make things enjoyable.”

I felt a small conflict over my two roles again, but I put my Guard’s duties out of my head this time. Gilda needed a boyfriend now, and it wouldn’t be a perversion of justice to console her if she was having troubles with her sentence. “You didn’t do too poorly back there.” I raised my left shoulder. “The children seemed to enjoy your story, at least.”

She scoffed. “Yeah, what was left of it.”

I got the feeling that I was walking near a delicate subject, so I had to choose my words carefully. I mulled it over for a few moments and decided she was upset to deviate from the source material by way of making it appropriate for foals. It fit; she was a griffin of tradition. I tested out my theory by asking, “Where did you first hear that story?”

She looked down and away, at the opposite side of the path we were sitting near. She let out a grunt before admitting, “I... don’t remember. It was a long time ago when I first read that story; it would have either been in school or at the Records-keeper’s.” Her remembrance cleared as she turned back to me. “Why?”

I shrugged again. “It’s an old story, then?”

“No,” she replied suddenly. “A legend losing part of its meaning over time is different than that butchery I just did.”

As I thought of what I was going to say next, I noted the difficulty of reasoning with Gilda. It was like a game of chess sometimes, and I wasn’t entirely sure which of us was the better player. I tried a different move. “Well, fine, you botched the legend of Ing,” I admitted. “But do you think those children have the capacity to reproduce what you told them perfectly?”

The scowl she got when she was processing something difficult came over her face, and I had to keep from smiling over victory. “Probably not,” she admitted, “but that doesn’t give me the right to choose their starting-off point.”

“Why did you omit parts, then?” I asked.

She made a motion to start talking, but then she thought about her words some more. Finally, she shook her head, “I dunno. I forgot how bad some parts of the story got, and halfway through, I decided I didn’t want to stop and explain things like rape or castration to a group of kids.”

Her answer made me reel slightly. “Well... then, that’s... a good reason, then. Maybe next time go for a less brutal legend?” She glared at me, which I took as an indication that there weren’t any, so I compromised. “Okay, then, maybe not. Still, you’ve got a decision to make: either censor yourself or stick with the reading materials they provide you with.”

Gilda still wasn’t convinced. She shook her head and muttered something in her language, but I couldn’t discern any meaning from it. Looking back at me, she raised an eyebrow. “Sorry. I’m just... why’d it have to be kids?” she whispered quickly. “And I mean, not even healthy ones, or ones that are going to get better.”

I thought I heard her voice crack, and I knew it was an even more delicate subject matter than the last one had been, so I tried to ask as soft a question as possible. “You like children, then?” As soon as it left my mouth, though, I realized how stupid and, given our roles, personal a question it was.

She caught on immediately and replied, “Do you really want to go down that road?”

“No,” I said as softly as I could while still putting force into the word.

A moment of silence passed before she said something. “It sucks, thinking you want something, then finding out you’re... I mean, you saw when that little one hugged me?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “She was cute.”

“How am I supposed to feel about that?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean... a little kid shows me affection, but I don’t feel anything back towards it,” she admitted.

“It?” I asked sharply. I was torn between sympathy and anger at her borderline hypocrisy.

Gilda hardened, either in response to my words or in preparation of her own. “It,” she sneered. “I can see how it’s a punishment, but I’m not going to get attached to any of those kids while I’m at it.” She shook her head. “That’s too much.”

It was an incredibly cold defense mechanism, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt that was all it was. “Won’t get attached? Or don’t want to?” I asked.

She turned her head away. “I’ve just... never met anyone with an expiration date before. I don’t know what to do.”

There it was. She wasn’t a monster, she was just confused and sad. I scooted closer to her, wrapped my hoof around shoulders, and tried to comfort her. “Don’t be afraid of something because it hurts. Pain is better than feeling nothing.”

She rested her helmet against the top of my chest, sat back up, removed it, and then put her head back. We sat like that for a few minutes, and Gilda seemed to finally relax. Finally, she offered, “Sorry I’ve been kind of a wreck today.”

I shrugged, noting the added weight of her head. “It’s not your fault. You’re in a new situation, a bit of hesitation is natural.” Even as I spoke the words, I wondered just how much of this Sherry had planned. It wasn’t difficult to see she was making a metaphor for Starfall’s children out of the orphanage, but the hospital? I reminded myself that assaulting a guard was a serious crime, but it almost felt like Sherry was sending a dire message with her punishment.

“So, what were you doing there?” Gilda asked.

“Huh?” was my reflex on getting shaken out of my thoughts.

“At the hospital. Why were you there?” she said slowly.

I almost brushed off the question, but I remembered how she had rightfully accused me of ‘holding back’ around her. That drove me to answer, “I think I might have ended my friendship with Starfall.”

She sat back up and pulled away from me, wearing a guilty expression. It was awkward to keep my hoof on her shoulders, so I brought it back to my side. Still, I wanted to set her mind at ease. “He’s angry at me because of how I handled the situation. He thinks that I’m playing favorites because he’s suspended and you’re not.” I thought back to his exact words, and figured they were inappropriate enough when he said them. “Mainly because we’re dating,” I finished.

“That’s... dumb of him,” she said bluntly. “I mean, we had that whole thing over objectivity last week.”

I stared at her. “Well, yes, but he wasn’t there for that. He’s been cooped up in a hospital wing for a week, and... I haven’t exactly been as diligent about visiting him as I ought to have been,” I admitted.

Time passed, and neither of us said anything. Finally, Gilda broke the silence. “So you think he’s right?”

That... was a good question. I had been so caught up with guilt over my actions last week that I hadn’t stopped to think about whether or not Starfall still had a point. Based on the two visits today, I was clearly enjoying my girlfriend’s company more than his; then again, she wasn’t throwing out stupid accusations of me being a pervert, either.

I thought back again to how quickly I had snapped at him to go away, and how whether he lived or not had been an afterthought that night. “He might be right, in a way, but he didn’t exactly give me a chance to apologize, either.”

Gilda nodded her head slowly without saying anything. After a moment, she asked, “What’s going to happen to him, anyway?”

That was a question with a simpler answer. “I’ve thought it over, and really, that depends on whether or not you two can come to some sort of agreement. Meaning, I have a different way of handling him based on whether or not he’s going to treat you like an officer instead of a griffin, and that’s only going to come about through some sort of dialogue between the two of you.”

She shrugged. “I’ll talk to him–”

Her suddenly self-righteous tone frustrated me, so I interrupted. “That’s exactly the type of attitude that you two are going to have to put behind you.”

In response, she scowled at me. “His wife treats me with more respect than he does.”

I thought about that for a moment before finally looking straight ahead and conceding defeat. “Touché,” I replied. If she treated Gilda better than Starfall did, it was a sign of just how skewed everything was in the first place. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do about the entire situation,” I admitted. “He’s not going to see being fired as anything less than a personal betrayal, but if I admit him back into the Guard just for that reason, then my judgment truly has been compromised.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gilda reach over and pat me on the back. I didn’t feel her talons in the gesture at all, which came as a surprise at first, but I didn’t let myself dwell on it too much. “Ten years seems like a long time to throw away over anything. He’s angry now, but he can’t stay that way forever, right?”

I grinned at her. “I hope you’re right.”

Her eyes darted to the sky, which was starting to get dark. I knew what that meant by now, so I got up. “I suppose it’s time for you to get going?”

“Yeah. The solstice can only do so much for more daylight, and that was a few days ago anyway.”

Solstice, I thought. I remembered her mentioning that in passing before. Suddenly, it clicked: “Isn’t it your birthday at the end of the week?”

“No,” she said quickly.

Despite her fervent denial, or perhaps because of it, I remembered when she had mentioned it. “Yeah... when you were filling out all of those forms, you said something along the lines of ‘every solstice like clockwork,’ and it was in June, now that I think about it...”

“Okay,” she admitted. “Yes, it’s Thursday, just... don’t make a thing out of it.”

I smiled and promised that I wouldn’t, even though I immediately started thinking about what I was going to do for her.

We walked together to the south gate so she could head back to her cave and I to my house. The trip was quiet, but it wasn’t full of uncomfortable silence like earlier. Instead, it felt like we had said all that we had on our minds, so now, we just didn’t have anything left to talk about.

When she left, I turned to head back to my home and sister. I had promised not to make a spectacle out of Gilda’s birthday, and I wouldn’t, but I still racked my brain over what sort of gift she would enjoy. It almost reminded me of Maxie, in terms of how difficult she was to shop for, but when I thought of my sister, a brilliant idea came to mind. It would be expensive – and intricate – and not without a few elements of subterfuge, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I might actually be able to pull it off...

Continue-->

Thursday morning came and I was a year older. Yay, me.

In my tribe, birthdays were celebrated as a tribal holiday. There were two month-long periods of time that all griffins were born in: either the beginning of summer or the beginning of winter. It took three months, give or take a few weeks, to hatch an egg, and that timeline fit in neatly with the wonderful reminders of fertility that my body gave me around every spring and fall equinox.

At any rate, everyone in my family had a summer birthday. What that meant for my tribe was that there was a huge feast to celebrate all of the summer hatchings. With the amount of personal information that our parents actually told my siblings and me, I was twelve before I realized that all of our birthdays might not have literally been on the same day. Sure enough, the actual dates were right there on the most recent census: I was born a good week before anyone else in my family, then most of my younger siblings were born within three days of each other, and Gerard and Gretchen were born on the same day, exactly a year apart, a little over a week after that cluster.

It had been a trip to the record-keeper’s cave that actually raised more questions than it answered, though. When I was within earshot, my mother never really said anything to my father other than short, yes-or-no answers. Needless to say, I never heard her address him by his name, but I had always assumed that his name was Gerard, because that was the name of his first son. I found out in the record-keeper’s archives, though, that his name was actually Garrick, which he had passed on to one of my younger brothers.

I had no idea where my older brother’s name came from. The mystery hit a dead-end, though: by her mocking tone, the record-keeper either didn’t know either or she wouldn’t tell me. I started on the task of poring over almost five hundred years’ worth of genealogy and censuses, but I had barely begun before my father showed up and taught me the correct way to mend an arm that had been broken in three places.

The subtext of the lesson had also been clear: stay away from the census information.

At any rate, Iron was true to his word and didn’t do much out of the ordinary that Thursday. I had reading duty at the orphanage that night anyway, so I used that as an excuse to not do anything with Iron that night. He insisted we do something, so I agreed to dinner on Friday after our shifts. I didn’t see how it should have been any different from a usual date, but it meant something to Iron, so I let him have it.

It was payday, so I finally had pony money again. It didn’t really matter, though; Iron paid for me anyway. With how much he had built up the evening, I spent most of it on-edge and waiting for someone to wheel in a giant cake, but nothing loud or obnoxious happened. There weren’t any balloons or streamers at the restaurant, and I went the entire night without having my taste buds burned off with joke candy.

All in all, it was a pretty good birthday dinner.

When we were under the archway at the end of the night, I thanked him for dinner.

“You’re welcome,” he replied. “I kept everything low-key for you, at least.”

“And thanks for that, too,” I added.

Iron didn’t say anything back. Instead he leaned in for what I thought was going to be a hug, but instead, he kissed me on the cheek. My face turned hot, even if the feathers and dull lighting probably hid most of it from him. “Good night, and happy birthday.”

“G-good night,” I returned, flustered. The heat in my face permeated the rest of me, and I wanted to return the gesture, but I figured that would more than likely leave him bleeding. That frustrated me even more, but I gave him a quick neck-hug back, which was as close to an equivalent as any, so I guessed that was good enough.

We parted ways and I flew back to my cave, alone with my thoughts. By the time I nestled down onto my blanket, I decided that I didn’t really mind that he had kissed me, but it was something I wanted to ask him about, because I sincerely didn’t know how I was supposed to return the gesture.

Cultures, I thought whimsically, even as I drifted off to sleep.

*        *        *

“WAKE UP, G.!” A yell shook my cave, and I snapped awake with a gasp.

I looked over to the entrance of my cave, and for a split second, I thought I was dreaming. Rainbow Dash was sitting there, holding a small box and wearing a huge grin.

I was still laying on my talons when I nearly jumped out of my own skin, but the pain that caused was a not-so-pleasant reminder that I was definitely awake. That only raised more questions, though, mainly: “Dash? Wha... what are you doing here?”

The tone of my question took the edge off her glee, so I shook my head. “I mean, hi, dude, but how did you...”

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” she said in a small voice, “but I guess that wasn’t the best idea.”

Sneaking up on a sleeping griffin rarely is, I wanted to say. I kept my anger to a minimum, though: I was starting to wake up, and I now realized that Dash had flown a long way to come see me. Now, I was ruining that by making her feel guilty. “You definitely surprised me,” I said as I stood up, not even having to fake being amused. When I thought about it, her showing up on my stoop was probably the last thing that I would have expected.

I looked down at my abdomen to inspect my self-inflicted damage; I had broken the skin in one place, but it was too tiny of a cut to even bother with licking. Instead, I looked back at Dash. “Sorry I kind of freaked out a... lot,” I admitted. Pointing a finger at her, I mock-accused, “You know I’m not a morning griffin, though.”

Her eyes lit back up at that. “Remember Cloudy’s nose when he tried to wake you up that one morning?”

I grinned back at her. “I wasn’t asleep that time, though.”

She put her box aside and jumped over to me in a flash of a hug. I returned it briefly and let her go. “How have you been, dude?”

“Oh, you know,” she said, rolling her eyes a little, “just being awesome.” She went over and picked up the package. “I brought you something, though!”

She handed it to me and I opened it up, not even bothering with caution. Yeah, she had pranked me with ‘spittin’ snakes’ a while back, but after that whole thing turned into a fiasco, I trusted that she would play her gifts straight. Sure enough, inside the box was a small, brown-colored cake with white trim and sky-blue icing spelling out the words ‘Happy Birthday G.’ “Heh. ” I reveled in the novelty. “You brought me a little cake that looks like me.”

“With the best color for the letters!” she agreed.

We split the cake, which was probably not the best breakfast, but I didn’t care: I was happy to see Dash again, and since it was just the two of us this time, there was no conceivable way that things were going to go wrong.

Still, I was curious. “How did you find this place? I mean, I don’t really have a sign out front.”

“Sometimes, I amaze even myself,” she started. “I figured you had work on Thursday, so I’d come visit you on the weekend–”

That raised another question. “How’d you know the day?”

“That day we hung out together at Junior Speedsters’. You said it was your birthday; it’s also Spitfire’s birthday! Which is pretty cool,” Dash clarified, and I braced for more trivia about the Wonderbolts. Instead she stayed on-task and continued her story, “But anyway, I left Ponyville late last night, so I started off in Farrington right when the gates opened. One way or another, I came across a fan of mine, and he was so happy to see me that he let me know that you lived to the south. Then, uh, I spent the rest of the morning checking caves, and I figured we’d find each other eventually.”

“A fan?” I asked.

“Some tall gray guy with blue eyes and not much mane left, but he knew me before I even had to introduce myself!” She was almost swelling with pride. “He was out jogging around in the streets, so I can respect a fellow athlete, even if he’s nowhere near as fast as me!”

I vowed that some day, I would visit the world that Dash lived in. For now, though, her joy was contagious, and I felt myself both smiling and unable to burst her bubble by telling her how she had run into my boyfriend, so I was how he knew her.

Instead, we spent most of the day together. On her suggestion, we flew several miles east so we weren’t over the Everfree Forest; after that, we took turns doing stunts almost the whole morning. The only limiting factor, really, was whether we called it a game of ‘Pony’ or not. I still lost, but for the first time ever, it had come down to the ‘y’ for both of us.

I was surprised that, in as little as a month and a half, I was much better at stunts and maneuvers than I had been in Ponyville; then again, I was used to wearing about a hundred extra pounds of armor when I flew. Dash noticed it, too; even though she was always too supportive to say anything negative, I didn’t pick up any hesitation behind her praise.

Dash’s enthusiasm for flying had a limit, though; around noon, she collapsed onto a cloud in a nap. I had actually slept that night, so I went to get some lunch instead of sleeping. I took care to wash up afterward; I didn’t want to return the favor to Dash by freaking her out by being covered in blood when she woke up. Even if she would have found it funny, and she wouldn’t have, we didn’t really spend enough time with each other to waste it on so dumb a prank.

I sat around at the edge of the cloud she was sleeping on, somewhat bored, but I didn’t mind. She woke up around three o’ clock, if I had to guess by the sun’s position, and a sly look came over her face. “Stunts and games are one thing, but do you want to see something legendary?”

Of all the things I could ever accuse her of, ‘not being a good showfilly’ was not on the list. I sat there with piqued interest as she continued in a slightly nervous voice, “I mean, you’re kind of the first one to see it anyway, but...” Her voice trailed off as a horrified expression crossed her face.

“Is it the sound barrier thing?” I guessed. Six weeks ago, she had caught me out of a suicidal dive, and she had broken the sound barrier to do it. I didn’t even think that it was possible for a living being to do it, but... I was alive to give testament to it.

“Yeah, I just kind of forgot when I remembered how to do it.” She hesitated, guiltily, before asking, “How are you doing, anyway?”

“Better,” I said, serious but not sad. “I mean, no doubt, the last few weeks have been the busiest and weirdest of my entire life, but I’m getting by.”

She nodded. “I won the Best Young Flier competition with the Sonic Rainboom last Sunday.” It was bragging, but it seemed to be somber and quiet, like she wasn’t completely proud of it. “I mean, it was awesome!” she corrected. “But after all the excitement wore off, I realized that if I had messed it up, or if I hadn’t been there...” she shuddered.

“Wait... what happened at the Best Young Flier competition?”

“Twilight made some wings for Rarity, but they kind of burnt off in the sun when she was at max altitude. She was falling, so I saved her, and the Wonderbolts.”

Anyone else, I would have demanded proof from. I knew Dash, though, and I knew her ‘exaggerating’ tone and this wasn’t it, so I believed her. She continued, “I mean... I’m not even sure I can do it right now, if I wanted to; I can only do it when someone’s in danger... or if I’m standing up for someone, I guess.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “Seems like that’s a pretty cool talent to have, then. You can come through for everyone when they’re counting on you.”

Dash smiled weakly. “I mean, I’ve been trying to do it again, but it’s kind of hard to practice ever since I did it right over Ponyville...” She trailed off, smiling pensively, and chuckled at her memory.

I gestured at the plains around us with a wing. “I don’t think you’d bother anyone out here.”

She beamed again, but there was still a trace of uncertainty in her eyes. “So, you think I can do it again?”

“If anyone can break the sound barrier three times, it’s you, dude!” I meant it, too.

With that, Dash snapped a salute to me, then leaped and flew up. She leveled off at what I guessed was a high enough starting point for the dive. I saw her whisper something to herself before doing a small flip and flying straight towards the ground. She stretched her front hooves out in front of her, and she started to pick up speed until I could have swore she was starting to stretch out...

BOOM.

The resulting explosion hurt to look directly at, as it was almost as bright as the sun. As it spread out, it took on every hue in the rainbow, forming a ring that was at least twenty miles wide. Dash’s usual multicolored trail seemed to solidify, and I could easily follow her flight path as it turned around and headed back up to the cloud I was sitting on.

As she flew up, she shouted something, but I couldn’t hear it for how far away she was. She landed next to me, which made the cloud tremble, but it held together. A split second later, she mouthed the words, “Hi G!” with a wave, but it sounded muted and far away. It struck me that it was her shout from earlier; she had just beat the sound of her own voice back to me.

Needless to say, I was impressed. She was winded by effort, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. “You’ve been holding out on me,” I joked. “All those times you let me win a race.”

Dash caught her breath quick enough. “C’mon, G. You know diving’s different from straight-out flying.”

I shrugged. “I guess. Still,” my voice got louder as excitement got the better of me, “that was incredible!”

We sat around, and Dash regaled me with all of the flight techniques she needed to use in order to pull off the ‘Sonic Rainboom’, as she called it. I grinned; it reminded me of the good parts of Junior Speedsters’, and it almost made me want to go start training for stunt flying on my own. I reminded myself that ‘on my own’ was dangerous, and thought of my list of reasons why I kept flying ‘functional’ instead of ‘fun’. Maybe if I lived in civilization, I counseled myself.

Dash had segued into her training regimen, and I found myself envious of her lifelong passion. I liked being a Farrington guard, but it wasn’t something I’d really get excited about. Then again, I didn’t really get ‘excited’ about anything.

When she got done with her story, she changed the subject to me. “But enough about what I’ve been doing. How’s life up in Farrington?” It sounded weird to hear the name being spoken in... I supposed it was a Cloudsdale accent; that was where she was from. The more I thought about it, the more I could swear her voice reminded me of someone, but I dropped that train of thought.

Instead, I tried to sum up the past month or so in a simple manner: I held up my right palm and said, “Busy.”

Dash kind of flinched from the sight, but she nodded. “Yeah, your boss or something?”

“I wouldn’t call him that,” I corrected, even though when he had been in the Guard, Starfall had been my superior. I curled my fingers into a fist, one after another, and looked at the exit wound. “He’s got bigger claws than my brother, though,” I mused absently.

“Huh?” Dash asked.

“Nothing.” I shook my head. “The whole thing’s a mess. Ten years ago, my father attacked his wife, so last week, he tried settling the score. That... didn’t work out so well for him,” I admitted.

“Is he–”

I interrupted, “He’s fine, I think. Well enough to get pissy with Iron, at least from what I hear.” Noticing the blank look on Dash’s face, I clarified, “Iron Bulwark. The colt I’m dating?”

At that, her face lit up. “That’s right! You’re dating somepony now!” She seemed to forget about Starfall entirely, and her excitement unleashed a deluge of questions: “How’re you two doing? What’s he like? What does he look like?”

I took them on one-by-one. “We’re doing well, I guess. It’s weird dating your boss, but we’re getting over it. He’s...” I paused, trying to find the right word. I settled on, “quiet, but not because he’s shy. He listens more than he talks about stuff, anyway.”

Dash rolled her eyes. “Boys. They never say what’s on their mind.”

I was about to refute that stereotype, but Iron fit that bill closely enough. “Yeah, but he doesn’t just fake interest or anything,” I said, thinking back to how some of the males in my tribe acted with who they were courting. “I mean, he keeps helping me out with stuff without really asking for anything in return. How else can you measure if someone cares about you?”

She shrugged. “I mean, you like him and he likes you, right?”

I chuckled at the simplification. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.”

Her curiosity returned, but in a naughty way. “Is he a good kisser?”

I reeled from the question, slightly, and I felt my face warm up. I sputtered a few times before I started, “I mean... no, like, we haven’t... lips!”

It was Dash’s turn to chuckle, and that annoyed me slightly. She caught on quick enough, though, and apologized, “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t think that through.”

I accepted her apology with a shrug. “I mean, he kissed me, but it was like on the cheek, so I’m not sure if that’s what you were going after.” Dash remained silent, so I kept going, “I mean, there’s other stuff like that we’re going to have to work through, so...” I didn’t know where I was going with that line of speech, but I felt my cheeks growing warmer, so I just shrugged again.

Conversation dried up after that, and it ended finally when Dash punctuated a story she was telling me with an enormous yawn. “This was nice,” she started, “but I don’t think it did any favors for my sleep schedule. But it was worth it!”

“You taking off?” I asked. I was somewhat disappointed to have my friend leave so soon, but if she was exhausted, there wasn’t much I could do about that.

“Yeah,” she admitted, “I’ve got weather stuff tomorrow afternoon, so I should get back to Ponyville.” Recognition flashed in her eyes. “Speaking of, uh, are you gonna come visit soon?”

It was a question with fairly deep meaning, at least as far as Dash was concerned. If I went back to Ponyville, I’d first have to make amends to all of her friends for acting like a complete bitch to them the first time I had visited. I sighed inwardly; Dash was my best friend and I loved hanging out with her, but there was still that wall of pride I had that kept me from liking the idea of going back and apologizing to everyone. “I’ll think about it,” I promised, and I meant it.

That answer must’ve been better than Dash expected, because she broke out in a huge smile. She came over into a goodbye-hug, which I returned. “Bye, G. I missed you.” Her voice was happy, but quiet.

“I missed you too,” I replied.

We parted ways on a much happier note than we had six weeks ago, or at least, neither of us was crying. I watched her weird rainbow trail behind her until she was completely out of my sight; she was a fast flier, but it still took a few minutes. When she was gone, I looked around and saw that I was alone, so I decided to head back to my cave.

Iron and I hadn’t really made any plans for Saturday and he had a shift on Sundays, so I resigned to stay in my cave for the rest of my time off. It was lonely, but I was used to it; really, it just gave me a long time to think about what I promised Dash I would consider.

*        *        *

On Monday morning, I saw a griffin.

I was almost at Farrington when I noticed there was a white-and-gold figure standing outside of Iron's booth, presumably talking to him about something. Whatever her business was, I found the whole situation to be surreal. As soon as I came to grips with it, my gut reaction was fear. It had been several years since I had read the laws governing the Verbannungsprüfung, but it was simple enough: if I made contact with another tribe, I was dead.

I supposed there was a loophole in there where I could seek out another banned griffin, but even then, that wasn't a viable option. First of all, I had no idea if there even were any other griffins like that. It was a big enough event where I would have heard about someone being kicked out of my tribe in my lifetime, but I hadn't been able to go back past my early childhood when I checked on my tribe's census records. I also had no idea about the other tribes, but as one was tiny and one was 'civilized', odds weren’t great that I would even have another outcast to look for. Then, there would be the process of scouring an entire continent in order to find her in the first place, and she would be a female...

I shook my head sadly; it had been a recurring pipe dream of mine for the first few years of my banishment, when things got rough. In order to deal with present circumstances, I dropped down to the treetops of the Everfree Forest below me. I had always wondered what would happen if a griffin from a tribe contacted me, but given the brutal legality of my laws, I didn't want to test it out that morning. It wasn’t like there were any other griffins who ever left the northern tribes; given my location, age, gender, and the fact that I was wearing Farrington’s seal on my chest, it wouldn’t take a scholar to piece together who I was.

The safest bet was to duck into the forest for a few minutes until the courier was gone. But... it had been three years since I had seen anyone. I watched her as she took off heading southeast; I noted the grace and power in her wings as she leveled off at a fairly low altitude. As she got closer to where I was, I could see the markings on her chest: mottled feathers that formed a trio of vertical stripes. She was wearing a pouch that was emblazoned with a sleeker, reversed Treizklau, the seal of Erntving or Elpithasus or whatever-they-wanted-to-call-it. Combined with her bearing, there was no doubt in my mind that she was heading all the way out to the eastern coast. That was at least a forty-hour flight, which only raised the question of what was so damn important, for her to be visiting Farrington like that.

I was absently following her, reflecting on her beauty and rationalizing that it probably wasn't completely unheard of for a Grosfeder to head up this way, when she stopped mid-flight and twitched her head to directly where I was hovering.

We made eye contact.

By some subconscious miracle, my wings kept flapping as the rest of me froze. A myriad of thoughts ran through my head as I wondered what to do, but even several miles away, she caught on to my plight. Or something. Either way, she trembled – a chuckle – before shaking her head, rolling her eyes, snapping a left-handed salute to me, and continuing on her way.

Well up yours, you stuck-up bitch, I glared daggers after her. My anger turned to relief, though: if she was of a mindset to mock me, chances were that she either didn’t have to do anything about the Verbannungsprüfung or she didn’t want to.

Or at least, I hoped that was the case. It didn’t matter at that point, though: she was too far away for me to catch up, and even when I did, she was a full-grown adult. I wouldn’t be a pushover, but chances were that she’d kill me in a fight anyway.

I wasn’t late for my shift when I got to Farrington, but I was definitely closer to ‘on time’ than I usually was, so I kept things short with Iron as I walked through the gate. Oh, there were questions and answers to be had, but I didn’t think that three minutes were enough to cover everything in any sort of proper manner, so I was content to wait until one o’ clock.

Sherry apparently had other plans for me, though; I was patrolling the Market district again for some reason. The humor of the situation wasn’t lost on her, either, and she reminded me to “Stay out of trouble this time.” Whatever her reasoning for putting me there again, I was effectively stuck on the northern end of the city all day; it took over ten minutes to walk down the main drag of Farrington, and given the round-trip that would entail, I still wouldn’t have time to ask Iron what was going on.

If I had to do community service that night, I probably would have gone crazy with anticipation. Luckily, I was free until Wednesday that week, so when my shift ended, I finally got to go to the south gate of Farrington to tell Iron, “Hi.”

He chuckled in response, “There you are. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.”

“Nope, Market patrol today,” I answered, eager to get on with the conversation.

“That explains it,” he replied, nodding.

There was a lull in the conversation as I tried to think of what I wanted to ask first and how I wanted to bring it up. Finally, I came up with, “Who was she and what did she want?”

Iron raised an eyebrow and pursed his lip before he blinked a few times as comprehension dawned on him. “You saw... wait, where were you?”

I frowned and pointed my thumb over my shoulder.

“How did you know she was–”

“White feathers,” I said, ruffling a few of mine with the same hand. If he was going to beat around the bush any more, they were going to start standing up on their own out of anger.

He got the hint and finally answered my question. “She was a courier from Elpithasus, and she was here delivering this.” From inside his booth, he pulled out a wooden box that was short but wide. There was a seam running down the center of the top, effectively cutting a traditional Treizklau in half. “Your birthday present,” Iron clarified.

It was my turn to have realization rush over me, and my reaction was stuck somewhere between awe and gratitude.“You didn’t have to...” I trailed off as I took the box from him; at that point, I was more interested in its contents than I was with being humble.

The box was moderately heavy, but I sat down and opened the box using the two doors on top. Inside, I found four huge scrolls inside, parallel and set into recessions formed into a red cloth; each was bound around a spindle and sealed with a metal clip. The clips all had a different seal on them, and I recognized three of the four insignias right away as belonging to each of the three griffin tribes. It clicked then, that the fourth scroll belonged to the now-extinct Schnelfluge tribe, and my hands started shaking as I realized I was now in possession of more of my race’s culture than I had ever seen. “Wh... what...”

“Unabridged histories and legends of the thr– uh, four griffin tribes,” Iron answered, “each written in their original language.”

I had no idea how to read the Schnelfluge scroll, then, but I could get by with reading the other three. If there was enough crossover between the histories, I could probably even teach myself to read the fourth one; I felt myself trembling out of anticipation.

Suddenly, I felt guilty: this must have cost Iron a small fortune. Or... did it? “How much did, uh...” I tapered off as I heard too late just how rude that was to ask.

Iron, for his part, shrugged nonchalantly. “If it puts your mind at ease, it cost more to have it delivered than the actual package did. And even then, I didn’t expect Elpithasus to send one of their own to deliver it in the first place.” He frowned slightly. “Then again, I did mention how time was an issue.” He looked back at me with a smile. “Anyway, I’m not going to be eating gruel any time soon, and when it boils down to it, you’re worth more to me than the money was, so please...” He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

I felt myself rapidly being overcome by emotion, but I fought to keep it together. I clapped the box closed as I stood up and walked over to Iron. I stood up to reach him inside the booth, and he stepped up; without him getting out of his booth entirely, it was the best we could do for a hug. “Thank you,” I said quietly.

“You’re welcome,” he wheezed, and I relaxed my grip a bit, enough to feel a sigh of relief.

Almost an entire minute later, I pulled back away and felt conflicted. I didn’t want to cut things short, but I also knew that Iron didn’t like me lingering around his booth for too long – out of professionalism – and I understood that. I was technically off-duty, and even though there wasn’t a strict rule against it, it always sort of bugged me to walk around in my armor on our weekday dates. True, it was better than the sheer amount of pain it took to make the round trip in close to an hour, but at any rate, neither Iron nor I wanted me to start reading right then and there, so I knew I’d have to wait until I got home to start on my new hobby.

He picked up on my conflict. “Anyway, I imagine you’ve got a long night of reading ahead of you, so... good night, Gilda.”

I smiled back at him. “Good night, Iron.”

The box was definitely the heaviest thing that I had ever carried home with me, but I managed the trip with only having to stop to rest one time. When I got home, I was hungry, so I disarmed and put my scrolls near the wall; after dinner was done, I got ready to finally start reading.

I only had a few hours of daylight left by that point and a fire would be incredibly stupid. Instead, I  brought my blanket to the mouth of my cave, sat down, opened my box, and got out my tribe’s scroll.

Underneath it, in the recession where it had originally been, there was a small folded sheet of paper that had my family’s crest – two crossed Sicheln – on it. That alone shook me from whatever sense of elation I had been feeling, and I was now filled with a sense of terror. I set down the Sharfkral scroll and picked up the paper, if only to try and glean how much of a head start I had over whoever was coming after me.

It was a letter, written in my native language, and it said:

If this is actually intended for Captain Iron Bulwark, disregard the rest of this missive and we hope you enjoy the rich history of griffindom.

If this is actually intended for the daughter of the bastard who lives south of Daear Amddiffyn, then remember, older and younger, how many sisters you had on the last holiday we spoke.

The rest of the letter was an unintelligible stream of letters, without any spaces. I looked back at the second sentence again; between the Sterkergeist name for Bergfried, what looked like resentment of my father, and the fact that the last I had heard, he was living in Elpithasus, I guessed that it was my Uncle Wallace who wrote the 'missive' that I now held.

That put my mind at ease, slightly; he liked me, so this letter was going to be helpful. Once I decoded it, anyway. I had been ten at the time and it had been autumn, so that was nine sisters, not counting me... I also figured 'Festerjag' would be a part of it. With a single word to go on, I figured that it was one of two ciphers that, ironically enough, Father had ingrained into me.

At any rate, I needed something to write with if I was going to get this done without a splitting headache. I pulled a feather out of my wing and cut the tip to sharpen it to be used as a quill, but I still needed ink. I thought about using my own blood, but if I had to start fleeing for my life, I didn’t want to have to put up with the hassle of treating a bloodletting injury. It wouldn’t leave me unable to fight; it would just be irritating.

The best idea that let me work on it that night was to find some dark-colored fruit, gather some in my helmet, and mash it up with my baton. Fifteen minutes later, I had a helmet full of fruit pulp, which I secured into an upside-down position by placing some rocks around the bottom. Even with that countermeasure, I put the Sharfkral scroll back in the box and put it all the way in the back of my cave, though; I would deal with the scrolls as I needed to based on what I made out from my uncle’s letter, but I didn’t want to ruin them by getting juice all over them.

Now that I was ready to write, I just needed to figure out what. It took almost an hour for me to figure out the cipher, and even once I had cracked it, it took another fifteen minutes to translate the letter into a readable language. I added in spaces and punctuation as best as I could, and when I was done, it read:

Hello, Gilda.

I’ll keep this short as it’s hard to write like this. Still, I figure there’s a good enough chance this is going to end up in your hands and not some pony’s hooves. It's worth my time to try, at least.

No, I’m not going to enforce your banishment. I’m not even sure if this counts, but it’s not like I owe your father any favors. I won’t go into detail, but I tried for about six months to get it undone. If you can hold out for twelve more years, it will be over then, but I won't go into details on that, either. Just do us both a favor and tell the captain that this is a one-time-only deal.

Your family is doing well. No nieces or nephews yet, but your siblings are all still alive. They all think you're dead. It goes to show how backwards things are on that ridge; you were pretty big news at the time. Again, sorry, no details. I'm not going to go there and set things straight, either; it'd only be a matter of time before someone came to visit you, and that wouldn't end well for anyone involved.

Keep strong, Gilda. Remember that some of us still love you.

When I was done reading if for the second time, I still didn't know how I felt about everything. I was relieved to be safe, and overjoyed to even have correspondence from my uncle, but a lot of what he said...

They thought I was dead?

That... stung at face value. I supposed that, when I really thought about it, it shouldn't have been a surprise that Father never expected me to come back. It didn't change anything in the present, but damn it, that would have changed... what would that have changed?

With some difficulty, I put it out of my mind. I guessed that, even if it would have changed my life drastically, I wasn't uncomfortable with where I was at that point. I was a Farrington Guard, and even though his most recent gift came with an interesting catch, I had a boyfriend that definitely cared deeply about me.

Twelve years, though, was another point that I got hung up on. Was there a fifteen-year limit on the Verbannungsprüfung? I had never heard of that before, but then again, if I had known that I was going to be kicked out as soon as that summer was over, I would have taken a lot more time to prepare for the journey. At any rate, I'd be thirty years old by then; it seemed too far away to think about, especially with how my last few weeks had been going. I had no idea who I would even be by that point, so it wouldn't do me any good to start planning for it.

Those alone were massive to think about, but then there were smaller bits of flavor that also gave me something to think about. It didn’t really surprise me that none of my siblings had children: Gretchen was still pretty young, and Gerard apparently had no interest in procreation.

Musing over everything, in the end, I was wholly grateful to Iron for setting up the circumstances for my uncle to tell me everything. I was glad that I had put the scrolls away already; I appreciated the gift and still wanted to read them, but my uncle's letter gave me too much to think about in the present.

I reread that letter about twenty times total, still amazed at my uncle’s jumble of letters had actually held a fairly coherent meaning. By the time the sun was starting to set, I knew that it was about time for me to go to sleep. I read my uncle’s letter one last time, got up, and put it in my small traveler's chest with my other keepsakes.

After that, I had to clean out my helmet, so I took it down to my pond. There was still a generous amount of fruit goo in there and it smelled sweet, so curiosity got the better of me and I took a gulp. I had known that it wasn’t poisonous, but it tasted thick and bitter, so I dumped the rest out. I cleaned both the inside of my helmet and my mouth with water from the pond, and then flew back up to my cave.

Once there, I put my helmet with my armor and laid my blanket back where it usually went. I nestled down onto it, but my mind was still racing with the contents of my uncle’s letter. I didn’t think I would get to sleep that night, but it still came soon enough.

*        *        *

I woke up back in my family’s cave, or at least I thought it was at first. As I looked around, the walls of the sleeping chamber were farther away than they should have been, making the room twice its usual size. It was completely empty, too, which only added to my confusion: we were a huge family, so there would always have been a few of my sisters in there.

My footsteps echoed off the stone walls as I walked out into the main chamber. The silence was heavy, so I heard the soft clicking of my talons on the stone as I walked. There was a growing sensation that someone was behind me, watching me, but I had to look in the main chamber first.

There wasn’t anyone there, either. A thin film of soot coated everything, and someone had torn down the pair of Sicheln that made a tangible version of our family crest, but I was more intrigued by the huge, rust-colored stain that pooled on the wall and floor beneath where they had been displayed. I had no idea who it belonged to, but I knew that my brother had died there.

I took a step and heard a crunching sound; Comet Tail’s wings were on the ground, brittle and pale and dirty. I somehow knew that they had paled more than three years’ worth of time since I last had last seen them, and with that, I realized that I was dreaming. I tried to keep it together, though; if I woke up now, I’d never see why everything was so... desolate.

My old home didn’t have any answers, or at least, I didn’t want to come across the burned remains of my family that were piled in my father’s chamber, I now knew. At least, I knew that they were there; I would only have that visual if I went and looked at it myself.

There had been some sort of fight, and we had lost. I wanted answers, obviously, but I had no idea who we had fought against. They had come at night, and no one expected it. Gretchen wielded both of our Sicheln, ready for the intruders. She yelled, “Verräter! Kommt und sterbt!” before she was impaled against the wall.

I left our cave and flew over to the main plaza, our tribe’s main gathering place. It was on the top of a plateau that was separated from the ridge by a steep chasm that was only about a hundred feet wide. Looking down, the bottom was illuminated by the bright fires of the magma that flowed like blood. Someone was down there looking up at me, but it was too dark and far away to tell who it was.

The plaza was empty as well. In front of me was a huge stone altar; it was built in the remains of our now-unused bonfire pit. The only thing on the granite was a sticky-looking black stain. I didn’t quite know what it was from, but the cries of those who were damned to Wodan echoed in my mind as the shackles rattled against the clean stone top.

The oppressive feeling of being watched came back to me, but that was normal; the record-keeper was always watching me when I visited her cave to borrow a scroll, in case she needed to alert my father. She was barren, so they were free to carry out their affair in secret, even in March and September. She loved him. Now, there was nothing left in her cave except for soot and the charred remains of the shelves that used to hold scrolls. I heard her voice echoing from a distance, “I would rather we face oblivion than to have our cowardice resound throughout the ages.”

I walked outside, but there was someone behind me in the record-keeper’s cave. I turned around, but there was nothing behind me except for the expanse of desert to the north. ‘Orphan’s Wasteland’, they called it, and the sun-bleached bones of centuries’ worth of unwanted cubs were a testament to our sins.

We denied it, and that was why we were cursed.

There was only death waiting for anyone who entered the realm of the Sterkergeist. I took off north, headed for Bergfried, where they would greet me with open arms.

My name echoed up from the sands below, and I looked down to see who it was. Dash was beside me, so I had nothing to worry about. Fear gripped me when I saw the legion of infant griffin skeletons staring up at me, huddled in a mass, and tracking my movement with their heads.

I flapped my wings, gaining altitude and distance between myself and this small army of the dead. Dash abandoned me to die. The world flipped upside-down around me, so I crashed into the sand below on my back. I was surrounded by the cub skeletons. I wanted to stand up to defend myself, but I was too heavy and couldn’t move. Instead, I could only watch as they closed in; I had no right to know, but I knew why they were vengeful, I felt their hunger...

For the second time in three days, I cut myself waking up out of fright.

What the hell had I just dreamt?

The glowing hour arm of my clock told me that it was close to four in the morning. I still had four hours until I needed to get ready for work, but there was no way that I was getting back to sleep after that.

I tried to remember details from my dream, but it was like trying to grab fistfuls of water. All that I could remember was an overwhelming sense of death, and how my tribe’s ridge had been empty because of it.

That wasn’t really... that new of a concept to me, though. We were going extinct, plain and simple. It was a cold truth had been instilled in me since childhood, at school.

I came back to some of the details, though, mainly... one of my older siblings being killed by ‘traitors’. That was interesting, but the more that I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that it didn’t make sense. The word implied that griffins were responsible, but there wasn’t any reason for it that I could think of. Sure, we got restless and frustrated from time to time, but we were generally too apathetic to organize and speed up the process of our race’s impending demise. Besides, I had just heard from my uncle after three years, and he hadn’t mentioned any sort of inter-tribal conflict.

With that, I figured that was the cause of my dream in the first place: My uncle had said my family thought I was dead, and my sleeping brain shortened that to ‘my family is dead’. When I thought about it, it was silly to just project my dreams onto reality like that. What happened in my mind stayed there, so I hadn’t just had some sort of doomsday prophecy.

I hoped.

Try as I might, I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that my dream had given me. After twenty minutes, I quit what I decided was a futile effort. The dream had scared me on a primal level, deep in the back of my mind, so no amount of logic would make that go away. Instead, I thought of Iron, hoping that a happy thought would let me get back to sleep easier.

It did, and I fell back asleep, this time filled with a warm feeling.

I sat across the table from my husband, and I almost laughed at how stupid I had been to think that, now that he was home more often, things would change between us. He had been home for close to a week now, but as I should have known, things were back to their usual, wordless routine. I didn't remember when 'silent breakfast' became a tradition in our house, but I supposed it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Oh, Starfall would talk, if I asked him a question, but that was purely out of politeness, and I had to be the one to start conversation. I hated that. It wasn't that he was a bad colt, even. Several times a year, not counting birthdays or our anniversary, he would surprise me with a gift or some flowers, and they were always thoughtful. There were days where I couldn't exactly pinpoint what I didn't like about our marriage. But then there were days like this morning, where he would be perfectly content to ignore me except to ask me simple things, like to “Pass the butter?”

I slid the dish across the table, and he thanked me. It bothered me to watch him do exactly what I was thinking about, but I didn't say anything. That was how things were with him: He wasn't cold enough to hate, he just wasn't warm enough to love. It was like he strategically did the bare minimum to call himself a husband. Several of my friends had asked me about our relationship over the years, and the few that I was open with had asked me, “Why do you stay with him?”

The clock on our wall read seven twenty-three; Hailey and Moonshine would be awake soon, and there was my answer. I must've been insane, but it was like he took all the love he was supposed to give me and instead, he gave it to our children. They were my world, so I wasn't even jealous of his affection to them; in fact, if it was the cost of him being a good father, then I was happy to pay it.

Something had broken when he got hospitalized for picking a fight with that griffin, though. Part of me hoped it was the painkillers, part of me rationalized he was supposed to be under bed rest, not being up and about like he was, but then there was the part of me that saw the growing rift between him and our children. That terrified me, but that turned to cold fury when I realized that if I let myself cry over it, he'd ask me “what's wrong” and try to comfort me.

When the clock struck the half-hour, I couldn't take it anymore. He had been home for a week, but he had said nothing about money, and that was concerning. If I had to break my back in the mines because he was too headstrong to work things out with his friend, I didn't mind, but I just wanted to know what the situation was.

“So,” I started as pleasantly as I could, “what's happening with you and the Guard?”

“I don't know,” he said coolly in spite of the fire behind his words, “why don't you ask Iron?”

“Because that's not my job,” I responded.

“Apparently, it's not mine either.”

I let out an angry sigh and shook my head. “So, what then? Are we going to board up the house and fight off debtors? I mean, we've got savings, but–”

He stared at me with what I thought was anger, but I supposed that was what passed for sincerity from him. “When I can, I will get a job.”

Him and his 'simple' plans. “And when's that going to be?” I pressed. “Heck, where are you going to get a job that pays like the Guard?”

Starfall ran a frustrated hoof through his mane. “I don't know, all right? Is that what you want to hear? How I'm a lazy bastard because I'm sitting around all day when I should be out right now, looking for work?” I felt like he had slapped me, but he kept going in a rushed voice, “I'm waiting until I'm healed because you know as well as I do that there aren't any jobs in this city for a crip–”

He stopped himself far too late. I felt like the bottom fell out of my stomach when I heard what he thought of me.

I couldn’t believe it. It had been ten years since my injury. Ten years, and he had been thinking that the whole time? Every time he assured me he didn't think that, every time he helped me get past the memory of flying and how I'd never feel it again, every time he helped me cope... I shook my head slowly. They hadn't all been a lie, they couldn’t have been.

Still, there was that word, and now it was coming from the colt I thought I was sufficiently married to.

I felt the weight of the entire situation we were in: financially insecure, loveless, and now, we still had to deal with what that demon had done to me. I felt betrayed. Tears, frustrated and hot, welled up in my eyes, but I blinked them back down. Across the table, Starfall let out an angry sigh, and I knew he was frustrated with himself, for some reason or other. I had to know, though. “Is that... what you think of me?”

He cringed, but he didn’t even make an effort to deny it. His silence said more than anything he could have said, and I felt like I had been hollowed out. I asked, quietly, “Is this where we are?”

This time, I waited for Starfall to say something. Five minutes later, I almost gave up, but he finally broke our silence in a low voice. “It’s not that you’re... like you are, it’s just... you just accept it.”

In spite of everything, I felt sorry for him. He had been keeping that bottled up for almost ten years? I couldn’t even imagine what that would be like, and for something so... My pity dried up when I realized just what his words meant. “Is that... you’re jealous that I’m not miserable like you?”

“Miserable–”

“Don’t even!” It was all I could do to keep from shouting. A decade’s resentment bubbled over, though, and I felt myself talking faster and faster. “But no, just because I don’t sit around moping all day, I’m weak? Just because one of us is coping with what happened, that means I’m just accepting it?” My voice turned to steel. “I think about what happened every day. Every time I look up at the sky, every time I see one of our kids flying, every time I have that... nightmare.” I shuddered. “And you have the gall to sit there and call me a cripple?” I scoffed. “Fuck you.”

Starfall blinked a few times, but his eyes were wider than I had seen in a while. Surprise quickly turned to a frown, though, and he asked, “How am I supposed to know this if you don’t tell me this?”

“How could I not feel like this?” I asked, more incredulous than angry.

His frown turned to a scowl and he stood up. “So, I’m a mind reader but you always bitch at me for ‘keeping things bottled up?’”

“You,” I started, standing up to match him. My anger took over completely. This was not my fault. I pointed a hoof at him and accused as loud as I dared, “Don’t turn this on me!”

He glared at me, which turned to a shudder. Instead of saying something, though, he just grunted angrily, turned, and started walking out of the kitchen. I stood there, still disgusted for a few moments before I came to my senses. I followed him. “Starfall, wait,” I called after him, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he threw our front door open, stepped outside, and shut it rather gently behind him.

With our fight over, I just shook my head at the now-closed door. Yes, he was an asshole, but that had been the first opportunity that we had to talk about a huge problem, and I blew it. I swore, quietly, and wondered where things were going to go from here.

It took a great force of will to keep from slamming my front door behind me. Worse still was my neighbor out in her yard who didn’t know what was spinning in my mind as she greeted me, “Good morning!”

I returned the greeting, probably harsher than I should have. After apologizing for making her flinch, I decided it would be best to go somewhere where I didn’t have any personal stake invested. I didn’t care where; I just started walking.

About ten minutes into my trek, I found myself wearied by the effort. A more rational mind would have noted that this was my first time leaving my house since I returned to the hospital under order of ‘bed rest’; crippled as I was, though, I refused to let Comet dote on me like I was an invalid. I was just happy that my wings had finally stopped aching enough that I didn’t have to keep myself dulled with painkillers.

No matter how far along in the healing process I was, I hated not being able to fly. Granted, recently, I had only really flown outside of the northern wall for early-morning calisthenics, but I hated that Iron’s social experiment had taken even that away from me.

Griffins. I spat on the side of the road, much to the dismay of a passer-by. Weren’t they almost all dead, anyway? School had been over ten years ago; when I was told that my ‘average’ grades were going to most likely lead to a job in the weather factory, I started looking outside of Cloudsdale for my future prospects. It had seemed so easy back then: Go to a place with a low pegasus population, and then be in demand based solely on your ability to fly.

At any rate, I thought I remembered hearing about how there were only pathetically-small tribes of those beasts remaining. Comet had been the one more interested in Equestrian air spaces and no-fly zones; of the two of us, she took the ‘certified flier’s exam’ and passed. Money had been tight for my family, so I decided to ignore that pointless exercise so that my mother and I could eat that month.

And look how well that worked out for her, I thought blackly. It hadn’t even been ten months after her long-distance certification before she misjudged a landmark and flew straight through griffin territory. Apparently, it was a crime punishable by death. As I walked and felt what it would be like to not be able to fly for the next few months, I wondered just how ‘merciful’ that monster had been.

But no, there was no reason to be afraid of them. Griffins were only single-minded, grotesquely-violent freaks when provoked. There had been constant, if quiet, pressure to increase the force that monitored our walls and a few strategically-placed watchtowers throughout the city proper; the official reason had been for added protection from the manticores and wyverns that sometimes made their way over the Violet Mountains to the west or even the land-based beasts that came from the southern expanse of the Everfree. Almost everyone I talked to agreed, though: Any sort of organized assault from the griffin tribes looking for a ‘last hurrah’ would take a massive toll on this city. In turn, Celestia – or, I supposed, her sister Luna now – would come to our defense, but how prompt of a defense would that be? How many good colts, fillies, and foals would die needlessly before that happened?

I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for that to happen, though. Comet constantly berated me for training with my knife as extensively as I had. After my duel and seeing the limits of close-range combat, I decided that a knife was probably not the best weapon to use. Not only did it get one into too close quarters with a griffin, but if her reaction to being stabbed was any indication, it only served to make them more violent. It didn’t give her a right to take mine, granted, but I figured that I would need to use a different weapon the next time I fought a griffin.

My mind went back to my earlier conversation with Iron about an ‘active defense’, and how he had specifically warned me against such a fight in the first place. I scowled as I imagined what his pompous, ‘I was right’ attitude would be like.

He had sent me kindling twice this past week, which was a nice gesture, but we didn’t open our fireplace during the summer, so I had resorted to shredding the letters by hoof. It wasn’t the easiest task, but I didn’t have anything to hear from him that wasn’t best said in a face-to-face conversation. I already knew I was effectively fired from the Guard, but he seemed to enjoy flaunting it the one time he had visited me in the hospital. Instead of apologizing for blatantly playing favorites with his new fetish, he had come to... what, use his authority as some sort of bargaining chip over me? I was angry enough over my entire situation without him coming over and treating me like I was a teenager.

I was sad to have his dating life come between our friendship. Ironically, that wasn’t because he was dating a griffin; that was just who he was when push came to shove. I had always joked that he needed to find a girlfriend; now that he had, the small part of me that actually wanted to repair things between us wished that he was single again.

Repairing things, I repeated the phrase in my mind as if it contained some sort of profound knowledge. In a moment of weakness, I had told Comet how pathetic she was, and she turned it around to make it look like I had a problem. If it was a ‘problem’ to not just bend down and take everything that life was going to give me, then I didn’t want to be ‘normal’. Hell, if anything, her tirade about how much she hated her condition proved that I was right: she had problems that she was just trying to ignore.

Her fake strength was built on lies and self-delusion, and I hated how shallow it was. If I had known that this was how things would have turned out for her, I would have left her to cope with things on her own while she was still in the hospital. Ten years later, though, I was trapped in our marriage by what amounted to a couple of –

I stopped dead in my tracks when I realized where that train of thought led. A filly behind me headbutted my flank as she turned out of the way and reminded me to “Watch where you’re going!”

Through my teeth, I lashed back at her. “Eat. It.”

She scoffed and carried on her way, and I took the opportunity to regain my bearings. Thanks to the clock near the intersection I was at, I knew that it was exactly eight sixteen in the Market district when I was reminded of the fact that I was a bad father.

I started walking again, but it was a much more subdued action than when I had started out over twenty minutes ago. I... wanted to love my children; that was the truth that I finally settled on. If I judged myself based on my actions over the past few weeks, or even the past few years, though, how often did I put my own priorities ahead of them?

I was a selfish colt, and I felt raw in the face of that truth. Not for the first time, I thought back to how I had literally asked for death instead of having my pride injured. Granted, my head had been swimming in agony by that point in the night, but with a clear head, I could put the blame on myself instead of the one who was causing me all of the pain. I tried to be a good father, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t even put them ahead of my pride when my life depended on it.

And now, just as I had feared, I owed her a debt of gratitude for not killing me.

Forget selfish, was I really that petty?

I thought back to my wife... Why did she need to suffer for her pain to be real to me? I should have been able to sympathize, if I couldn’t empathize with with her loss. Instead, once she started coping with her loss, I assumed it was weakness that was causing her to accept her fate. Because I couldn’t accept that she was happy... now she was probably going to have to help out with some sort of job. I knew it was part of my condescension to her based on her handicap, but I still meant every word of my promise that I would protect and provide for her.

Celestia only knew I had caused her enough problems by dragging her along with me to Farrington in the first place. She didn’t deserve to have to suffer through a job on top of everything else that I had done to her.

Thinking of our money troubles, I thought back to Iron. As much as I wanted him to be as selfish and petty as I was, that just wasn’t the case. He hadn’t wanted to just come talk to me about a job; I had just made it incredibly difficult for him to act as a friend. He had had a much rougher life than I ever did, and he was finally coming around to the idea of romance, yet all I was doing was making things difficult for him because of what his girlfriend was.

As for her... I scowled. Comet told me of a one-eyed, male-sounding creature that was more than twice her size back then. Since the attack, we had both grown a bit taller, but there was no way that Iron’s girlfriend fit the description, even if she did have a freakishly gravelly voice.

At any rate, she was presently dating what passed for my ‘best friend’. I owed it to Iron to at least try to put aside my resentment of what griffins did to my wife, if only when dealing with her. I smiled bitterly as I remembered that I wasn’t a part of the Guard anymore, so our paths wouldn’t be crossing anymore.

That was one problem solved, at the very least.

I rolled my eyes at what an effective solution that was. When I looked around, I saw that I was still in the Market district, just several blocks farther north than when I had been rear-ended by that filly. It suited me just fine, though; I lived north of the Market district anyway. I didn’t deserve it, but it was time for me to head back home.

I continued north, and as I maneuvered back to my house, I passed a grocery store. I knew better than to think that a quart of milk would solve my problems with Comet, but at the same time, we were out, and it would be one less thing for her to insist on doing ‘because I needed to rest’ later on.

The bell above the door jingled as I passed through, which got the attention of the beige cashier who was standing inattentively at his register and hoofing through a magazine. He glanced at me for a moment before snickering, but he returned to his magazine fairly quickly, apparently deciding that I wasn’t worth much more of his attention.

Anger slowly filled up the space in me that my self-loathing had hollowed out. I bristled all the way to the strategically-placed dairy cooler at the back of the store. I didn’t have any saddlebags, so I wasn’t going to be able to buy anything other than one jug of milk; then again, it wasn’t like my family was financially solid anymore. But apparently, as I gleaned from the cashier recognizing me from the newspaper, that was a laughing matter.

As I walked back to the front of the store, I vowed that, if that cashier even looked at me funny, he would get very intimately acquainted with his magazine.

Sure enough, during the checkout process, he wasn’t content to just do his job. As he punched a few buttons on the cash register, he snarked, “Love the pink.”

I narrowed my glare at him. “What?”

He tapped himself on the back, and I instantly remembered the casts that were on both of my wings. Damnable things. Moonshine liked the color, though; she and Hailey had both taken the opportunity to draw happy faces and other pictures all over the hot pink wrappings.

My indignation turned righteous, though; if this colt was going to mock me over something my children enjoyed, then he could shove his laughter up his ass. “Do you have any kids?” I asked coolly; I was collected enough to know that it wouldn’t do me any good to snap at him without a proper foundation.

In response, he picked up a small, folding picture frame and held it out in front of me. A filly about Comet’s age looked at me from the left side, but on the right side was a pair of girls, probably ages six and eight. I nodded slowly at the pictures, and the cashier put the frame back on the counter. After seeing the three ponies he was working to support, I felt a bond of empathy, if not jealousy, with him. At any rate, I could look past his laughing at my casts; he was probably like that with everyone.

I paid for the milk and left the store feeling much more serene than when I had entered... or than I had felt in a long time, for that matter. I didn’t really have a clear sense of direction on any of my problems, I just knew that I owed it to my two children to try and be the best colt possible, and that included addressing my personal shortcomings.

As I walked home cradling the jug, the skin on my right arm was beginning to go numb, but I still didn’t have the strength needed to walk three-legged on it, so I couldn’t trade arms to hold it. After six blocks of walking in that manner, I was glad to see my front doorstep.

I came back into my house to the sight of my children eating breakfast and my wife cleaning up at the sink. Hailey beat his sister to greeting me, but only because she was polite enough to keep her orange inside her mouth. I smiled at them as I walked past; I had to put that jug of milk down before it gave me a cramp.

After putting it in the fridge, I walked over to Comet. She didn’t acknowledge my presence, but she was more sad than angry, so I figured that she just couldn’t find the right words to say. I was more to blame anyway, so I leaned in for a quick kiss which she neither returned nor shied away from. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. It was tricky to try and put the right amount of meaning into the words while keeping my voice low, but she turned to look me in the eyes after I said it.

She kept her hooves in the dishwater, but she nuzzled my cheek by way of accepting my apology. “Me too,” she whispered.

I smiled back at her before going over to the table to be with Hailey and Moonshine. I didn’t know where things were going to go between my wife and I, but for the first time, I was aware that I was the one that was going to have to work to deserve her.

As I looked at our two foals, it wasn’t the first time that I was filled with certainty that it would be worth it.

The day was almost over, and all I wanted was a drink.

I was busy fighting with myself over that when a new problem arose: a light-pink filly walked into the post office. After I greeted her, I risked a glance at the clock on the wall. It was good that she was ignoring me; instead of seeing my grimace, she occupied herself with walking over to the table to write the address on her package. It was 4:56; just four more minutes and I would have been gone. But no, she needed something mailed right at closing time on a Friday night.

The filly in question finished writing the address on the side of her package, blew on it a few times, and walked over to my counter. As she got closer, I could read that the addressee lived in Hoofington. Again, I had to fight to remain polite: an in-city job would have been annoying enough to process and get ready for delivery, but now, I was personally looking at having half of my weekend eaten by traveling.

I supposed it was better than having Iron mail something to the Hoofington Post Office again. Granted, it was the first time in the three years I had worked there that he had sent out-of-city mail; all his friends were within the city walls. He was polite about it and gave me plenty of warning, but he still had a legion of underlings he could have used instead of hiring me, and that was the annoying part.

On the subject of annoying, my thoughts turned back to the pink intruder on the other side of the counter. Couldn’t you have been five minutes later? I asked her, silent as it was futile.

She set her package on the counter with a “Good afternoon.”

“Hi,” I said, careful not to bare my teeth any more than a smile would normally show.

“What’s the fastest that I can get this to Hoofington?”

I wanted to beat her unconscious with her package. Instead, I quoted prices.“If you want it there by tonight, it will be one hundred bits; if you want to send it with the rest of Monday’s caravan, though, it’ll only be five.” I should have charged a premium for ‘showing up at four minutes to the end of my shift’, but even though this job got... bad... sometimes, I didn’t want to start breaking the law over it.

Iron wouldn’t like that.

The customer was a bit taken aback at the price. “A hundred bits instead of five? It’s only getting there a few days earlier!”

I will shove that package down your throat if you try to argue this. I felt my eyes narrow. I blinked before putting on an ‘apologetic’ face. “I know it sounds weird, but if you want it sent out outside of a caravan, someone’s going to have to take it by hoof. Even though the inn gives us a special discount, it’s still forty bits for a room, ten for meals, and then it’s an eight-hour round trip for the delivery filly on top of that.”

“Fifty bits for eight hours of walking?” she sneered.

“I wish,” I said without thinking. Catching it, I added, “I mean, the post office gets a cut, there’s taxes... I could go on, but are you really interested in how this whole thing works?” I had to fight from cringing again; that wasn’t the polite thing to say, either.

For her problems with timing, though, the customer let out what was either a light scoff or a polite laugh. “I suppose my brother can wait a few days,” she said as she put five coins on the counter.

Even though getting it ready to send up to the Artisan district was going to be a few extra minutes, I breathed a mental sigh of relief: better to get home at 5:20 tonight instead of tomorrow afternoon. I thanked her and she left the post office, leaving me to take her box to the back to start applying the appropriate stamps.

When everything was ready, I put the package with the rest of the caravan-bound mail. Most ponies preferred to do things the way that made sense; even though I got sent out on an almost-weekly basis, those deliveries were far less common than the ones that simply entailed putting the package in with everything that they dug out of the mountain and sent to the same city anyway.

That late on a Friday, it was only me and my boss that remained. Mr. McFeely stayed behind until 7:00 in case anyone wanted to send something at the end of the week, and though I felt kind of bad for leaving him alone, he didn’t want to pay me for two extra hours, so I couldn’t feel too bad about the whole thing.

Anyway, he stepped out of his office wearing his usual old colt smile, looked at the clock and remarked, “It’s kind of late for you to still be around on a Friday, isn’t it?”

“Someone came in at five-til with a package for delivery,” I replied.

“Well,” he said with a grin, “I can tell by your face they didn’t want it sent out to Stalliongrad.” I died inside at the sound of that city’s name and how lightly he mentioned it. I don’t know if he saw my reaction, but he changed the subject anyway. “But anyway, you’re free to go.”

I bowed and went into his office to get my saddlebags. I levitated them onto my back before fastening their buckle. When I went back through the door to the customer area, my boss was behind the counter with me, so as I lifted the counter to let myself through, I bid him, “See you Monday, Mr. M.”

“Good evening, Miss Ardor.” I smiled at our rapport: he wanted me to call him by his first name, but when I was polite out of habit, he started addressing me by my last name in turn.

My smile left me as I stepped out into the late-afternoon sun. The day wasn’t humid enough to be stuffy, but it was still hot enough to be uncomfortable. Still, I wasn’t one of those unicorns that could just learn random spells like ‘how to cool someone down’; I was stuck with basic levitation and the ability to sort things quickly. It was a bit disheartening to know what some unicorns were capable of doing by comparison, but when I saw the trouble my brother had with some tasks that were simple to me, I knew it could be worse.

Still, the heat was already making me sweat, which made me feel thirsty, and that brought me back to alcohol. I cringed at the unwanted thought and tried to remind myself of how bitter and empty it tasted, but that didn’t do anything to stop my desire. I tried reasoning that I was home and that sort of thing was unacceptable; hell, there wasn’t anything to unwind from, but I still couldn’t stop myself.

Normal ponies don’t fixate on it like this, I reminded myself, but the back of my mind first twisted that to “that’s because they just go and get a drink when they want one.” When I denied that desire, I just ended up feeling guiltier for having it in the first place, and that just made me want to –

I tried putting the whole mess out of my mind, but it came back to the same thing: I was lonely and wanted some company. Iron was probably the pony I spent the most time with, but even that wasn’t that much; after he got promoted to Lieutenant, there were only four hours out of the evening that he was home and awake. Then, last week, he had been out for almost every night helping with Starfall’s kids after that beast mangled him; apparently, assaulting a guard wasn’t enough to get her kicked out of this city. I knew better to question his judgment on that to his face, though. I just wished I knew when he was going to quit pretending otherwise and start seeing griffins like the brutal killing machines they were.

When I got to the main drag of Farrington, I had to make a choice. To the north was the quickest path home; to the south was the closest bar. I really didn’t want to start bringing Stalliongrad home with me, but Iron would freak out if he caught me drinking at home, even if I was more than a year old enough.

I took a deep breath. I was stronger than it. I didn’t need it. I turned north onto the road, but I almost retched when I saw her heading south on it. She was far away, but she wasn’t far enough that our paths wouldn’t cross. If I kept heading heading north, she was going to notice me, and she knew who I was.

I turned around and took the road south.

I hated everything about her. Not only was she a menace to society, not only was she tarnishing my brother’s reputation because ponies who saw him ‘showing her Equestrian culture’ mistook it for romance, but now, she was probably going to lead me to do something that I had no intention of doing. I turned right onto the first road, the one with the bar, and I sincerely wished that my brother had just let Starfall kill her back when he had the chance.

She deserved it, and there would have been less problems for everyone involved.

I got a grip on myself: I was not going to let her dictate my life. I resolved to just walk past the bar, turn north at my nearest chance, and then head home. I had a new graphic novel waiting for me there; that, and a nice bit of dinner... it would be a quiet evening, but a good one.

“Hey there,” I heard a voice call out. I first looked around to see who it was; the answer to that came quickly. The speaker was a pegasus colt who was more gray than he was blue, and he was wearing a scarf that would have looked good ten years ago. It was ironic, because he wasn’t much older than me, but combined with his dorky-looking glasses and time-weathered fedora, he looked like an old colt who got dressed in the dark. In a fashion museum.

When he saw me look around, he nodded at me and said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you on this end of town before.”

I scoffed and rolled my eyes; I wasn’t interested in him or his stupid scarf. I kept walking, but he was relentless enough to rush next to me, like my decision would be affected by how close he was to me. From his breath, I could tell that he had already had a few drinks that evening. “Get lost, creep,” I sneered at him.

He chuckled before replying, “What’s wrong? You only get hot in a blizzard?”

I stopped in my tracks, which was enough to make him grin victoriously. He knew, I shuddered, even though I had no idea how. Had I met him in Stalliongrad one night? Had we...? We might have, I realized, noting how sad it was that I couldn’t answer that question with any certainty.

“So, what d’ya say? A bottle of your choosing, a room of mine... we can get real cozy, huh?”

There was flash of crimson telekenisis and his head snapped to one side as I slapped him. After a moment’s thought, I did it again for good measure.

He was still stunned over it, so I decided to get away from the situation before it could get any worse. While I turned away, he snapped to his senses and sneered, “What, that’s less than your usual rate?” As I left, I heard him mutter loudly from behind me, “Whole friggin’ family’s fulla freaks... Ow... Bloody tart.”

Home was five blocks away, and I kept it together for that long, at least. As soon as I slid the bolt into place, though, I lost whatever semblance of control I had. He knew, I told myself through the sobs. It wasn’t like it was a huge secret anymore, but it wasn’t like everyone in Farrington knew, either. Still, it never got easier to have people bring it up, especially like that prick had. I wanted to stop what I was doing, I had tried to stop...

Everything that I hated about myself and that stupid job came out on the floor of our foyer, but I was too pathetic to pick myself up and get it together.

I was so alone.

Eventually, I stopped crying. I didn’t know what time I had gotten home, but it was a quarter ‘til now, so Iron would possibly come home in half an hour. I couldn’t remember what he told me that morning about if he had plans that evening. With a shrug, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make extra dinner in case he was staying in.

I started to get out the ingredients to make some hot sandwiches. With a weary smile, I remembered when Iron used to spend most of his evenings cooking. Then, I started taking deliveries so I could help out more with groceries, which took around two nights away every week. Now, there were nights where we wouldn’t see each other because he was out showing that griffin around.

I still thought he was out of his mind trying to civilize that... thing, especially after she mangled Starfall, but he told me several times that it was his choice to make, not mine. The only thing I liked less than him spending so much time with a griffin was that ponies actually thought they were dating; when I asked him about those rumors, he had just denied the ridiculous claim with, “Ponies will believe what they want, I suppose.”

And it was ridiculous. Sure, he wasn’t exercising the best judgment over even letting her in the city, let alone the Guard. But he didn’t even like fillies enough to try to find a girlfriend, let alone an animal like that. I figured the whole thing was his celibate lifestyle coming around to bite him in the ass: the first time in three years that he was seen in public with something female, and ponies thought he was getting laid.

He wouldn’t jeopardize the Guard like that, anyway. From that, and his denial, I knew that he wasn’t dating her. And he wouldn’t lie to me... siblings weren’t supposed to lie to each other, right?

I hated myself for doing everything that I did in Stalliongrad, but most of all, I hated having to keep it from Iron. But he would never understand. I was terrified by the knowledge that, eventually, he would hear something about it, and then I’d either have to lie even more or finally tell the truth. I’d be letting him down after everything we’d been through, and I didn’t want to do that, either.

I put it all out of my mind and focused on our sandwiches. Cooking was a relaxing process, but I still felt glad when my brother came through the door at six ten, like he usually did on the nights he wasn’t staying out ‘late’. After we said “Hi” to each other, he started to take his armor off in the doorway and I turned back to my fried tomato melts.

“What’re you up to?” he said, halfway through the process of taking his armor off.

“Making dinner,” I grinned back. “Are you going to stay in tonight?”

He clenched his teeth in hesitation. “Er... I told you this morning, Maxie, I’ve got plans tonight.”

I shrugged. “I’ll keep yours in the fridge then.”

“Thanks.” He nodded as he put the last of his armor on its stand near the doorway and asked, “Is everything all right?”

“Huh?” I asked. I had tried to be cheery, but I guess something showed through.

Iron came into the kitchen and stood next to me with a foreleg on my back. “I might be busy tonight, but never too busy to see my little sister’s been crying.”

Despite being found out, I smiled a little. “Oh, that.” I sighed, but decided to be honest. “Some skeezy drunk near a bar made a pass at me... I dunno, it was a long day at work and I guess that was just the last thing I needed.”

He snorted. “He’s drunk in public and insulting you. If only it had been an hour later and I was on my way home, huh?”

I thought of what would have happened if Iron overheard that conversation, and it made me reel. “I still got him,” I said, tapping my horn with the hoof I wasn’t using to hold myself up to the stove with.

“Oh?” Iron smiled warmly at me. “Good for you, then.” He patted my back before admitting, “I’ve got to get ready to go, though.” He walked back into our house; I heard him get something in his room before he headed into the bathroom; he made good time in preparing, though, and he was out of the house by six-thirty.

I finished the sandwiches, and true to my word, I put one in an airtight container in the fridge. The other one was mine, though, and I ate it in the kitchen with some milk. I didn’t even bother sitting down; really, there would be no point: without someone to enjoy eating with, I just wanted to get it done as soon as possible.

I thought back to when we were growing up, or at least, back when I was in school still. Iron had to work long shifts in the mine just to make ends meet, and things were always stressed, but we always had each other. Then he got the job as a guard and the money situation was better, but still not great, but we still rarely missed dinner with each other. He had always wanted to drag me out to exotic places that were probably out of our budget, so I hadn’t always been the best dinner company when I said ‘no’, but part of me missed those days before he met Starfall and Comet and started leaving me at home. Well, that wasn’t fair: he had always invited me along, but those meals always turned into him and Starfall talking the whole time, so I didn’t want to be like a third wheel. Comet was polite enough to me, but she was too withdrawn for my tastes. We also didn’t have all that in common, other than the fact that we both had history at the post office; given how things ended for her, though, I didn’t really want to bring that subject up on a whim.

At any rate, I had the house to myself, so I buried myself in my graphic novel like I had originally planned on. At eight-thirty, Iron came home again. He didn’t say anything at first, but I saw that his lip had a nasty-looking gash on it. It was fresh, but it wasn’t bleeding. I asked him, “What happened to your mouth?” At that point, I was more worried that he was okay than about greeting him properly.

He looked like he was chewing something for a few seconds before he started talking. “Stharfall apallaltly can’t take a djoke.”

“Did you bite your tongue?” I asked, noting his slurred speech.

“Kind oth,” Iron answered, bobbing his head from side to side. He went to the bathroom to gargle tap water. A few minutes later, he came out of the bathroom, clicking his tongue, and apologized, “I’m sorry for that.”

I shrugged as I flipped a page. “It’s no biggie.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him climb over the back of his loveseat and settle down on it, upside-down and splayed out unscrupulously. His head was almost resting on the floor, so I looked over and down to his goofy head; he proposed, “We should do something this weekend, just the two of us.”

That would be nice, I thought. It had been a while since we had gone out together, and I missed that. “What do you have in mind?”

“I don’t quite know yet,” he said while narrowing his eyes with a grin, “but we’ll think of something. Is there anything you want to do in-town?”

We discussed plans for the weekend, neither of us ‘sitting’ on our respective seats, but that didn’t seem to bother Iron. I thought about how far apart we had grown from each other, and I felt guilty for my part in that. I couldn’t dwell on it, though, at least, not that night. The more we talked, I couldn’t help but be put in a good mood. Iron was happy, most of our money and housing problems were well behind us, so even though we didn’t get to hang out a lot, when we did, there wasn’t much looming over us.

Most importantly, though, I wasn’t alone that evening.

Continue –>

Reading my race’s culture was a more time-consuming task than I had initially thought, but that wasn’t a bad thing. I was glad to spend as much time as possible rereading our lore. If I pushed myself, I probably could have finished the Sharfkral and the Grosfeder scrolls before the weekend arrived; they were the two languages I found it easiest to read in. However, that would have required me to not spend any evenings in Farrington, and that week, I split most of the evenings between community service and Iron. I didn’t mind the latter at all, though.

Being a storyteller to foals still gave me mixed feelings, though. The end of my session at the orphanage on Friday marked the end of my second week of reading. However, after the first day, I hadn’t tried to pass on my culture to any more children. They were an easy crowd to please anyway, so I read them stories that their caretakers picked out for me. I wasn’t the greatest at reading out loud, as I was better at speaking the ponies’ language than reading it, but I wasn’t horrible, either.

At the hospital, I was happy that the foals enjoyed the time I spent with them, but it was disturbing how the size of my audience fluctuated based on who was feeling too sick or was in another ward for tests or treatments. No matter how much I tried, though, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them, and I started to learn their names... my rational side screamed that it would only end in pain, but I was beginning to get attached to the little guys.

I preferred the hospital to the orphanage, at any rate. Firstly, there was a much wider age range that I was reading to, and some of the older foals thought it was funny whenever I stumbled over a word that was uncommon or sounded differently than it was spelled. It took a great deal of restraint not to just fly off the handle at them in my own language, or even the bits of the other tribes’ languages that I was refreshing myself on, but I managed.

Without exception, though, the foals there – if I could call them that; one of them was only a year younger than me – were cold and had an empty look in their eyes. There were two main ‘caretakers’, a husband and wife, but they always seemed busy and overworked, almost like they didn’t want to be there. They didn’t interact much with the children, at any rate, other than to tell them when it was time to eat or whatever activity was scheduled after I was finished for the evening.

It reminded me of home.

When I told Iron about it on our date that Saturday, he simply raised an eyebrow and replied, “Oh?”

We were on our bridge again, this time after dinner. By switching the order of things, we managed to miss crowds both at the restaurant and at the reservoir; we weren’t completely alone, but we definitely had a lot more privacy later on than we would have if we came during a more popular time at the pond.

We were sitting right next to each other, so I had to crane my neck back as I turned to the left and asked him, “What do you mean, ‘Oh?’”

“Nothing, I...” He seemed to catch himself, though, and he paused. “How much have I told you about my childhood?”

“As far as I know, you started life as an officer.” It was mostly true; he hadn’t said much about his childhood other than subtle hints that it was not-so-great.

He chuckled softly before his expression dimmed. “Well, I apologize for that.” After a slow breath, he continued, “But no, things were difficult for us, after my father died. I helped my mother out as best as I could, but... there’s only so much a seven-year-old can do. She never told me, but looking back, it’s obvious that we were struggling, financially.” After another deep breath, he tried to continue in a somber tone. “Then... a few weeks after my thirteenth birthday...”

It was strange to me, seeing Iron fighting his way through emotions. He wasn’t soulless or anything; it was just that I wasn’t used to seeing him as anything other than his usually merry self. Then again, after his fight with Starfall, it was becoming more and more common to catch him in a quiet mood – not sad, but not really happy, either. I patted him on the back, hoping to give him some comfort.

Iron smiled at me before continuing his story. “After the funeral, my sister and I went to go live with my uncle. He had had some sort of falling out with my mother at some point, so we weren’t really close; at any rate, he didn’t really want us. I put up with it for almost two months, but when he gave us the option of moving back to Canterlot with him or staying here in Farrington, I told him I wasn’t going. I didn’t know much about geography at the time, but what I did know that I didn’t want to be an earth pony in a city of unicorns, either. Maxie stayed with me, too, so we were homeless orphans.”

“As you can imagine, things weren’t exactly easy after that, either. I was thirteen, Maxie was eight, and we needed a place to live. There was the orphanage, but not only was there the risk of us being split up, it was...” He paused with a guilty look, as if he had said something offensive.

I realized what he thought would have offended me, so I responded, “I didn’t mean it in a good way when I said it reminds me of home.”

He nodded understanding. “Anyway, I was fortunate enough to join a mining guild run by a colt who was sympathetic to my plight. However, I was technically ‘off-the-books’, so the foreman he made it clear from day one that he couldn’t afford to pay me any sort of decent wage. Again, in hindsight, he was paying me out of his own pocket... but at any rate, it was extremely difficult.” He stared off into the waterfall, reminiscing. “Work was hard, money was scarce, landlords were predatory, and even then there was always the threat that we’d be found out and have to go back to the orphanage. In order to reduce the nights that I went hungry, I was always looking for a cheaper apartment or a landlord that was just crooked enough to look the other way when a pair of minors were renting his or her property.”

“My fifteenth birthday, I went to the Captain of the Guard and asked him for a job.” He broke his narrative to explain, “That’s the youngest anyone in the city is even allowed to work without their parents’ permission. I supposed I could have gone anywhere, or even worked for actual wages in the mines...” He stopped again to tap his flank on the opposite side from me. “I’ve always had a desire to protect others, and I wasn’t getting that in the mines. At any rate, he knew my father so let me on, even if it was only a probationary trial.”

I grinned slightly at the familiarity of the situation. Still, I had to ask, “Your father was a guard?”

Iron nodded proudly. “Sergeant Heart, with nearly twenty years of service.” His expression dimmed. “Not all guards’ deaths are at the hands of criminals, though. One day, we were both out playing in our yard – Maxie was too young – and he just... coughed,” Iron’s eyes flared at the word. “That was the start of it, I guess, but even then, it all just seemed too quick.”

I hadn’t really moved my hand from his back, but I rubbed it again a few times. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded gratitude and cleared his throat before continuing. “But back to my original story. After being hired to the Guard, I was gainfully employed. My money problems were over.” His face turned to a scowl. “Of course, any guard that has some sort of exploitable weakness is a criminal’s favorite thing to hear about. Someone followed me home one night and tried to both blackmail me out of my current apartment and buy me with another one. That was my first arrest. True, none of the charges stuck, but it brought Sherry’s attention to the matter. She cosigned a lease with me, and that was the end of my housing troubles.” He smiled, “She threatened to make my life hell if I even thought about missing a rent payment, but roughly seven hundred bits a month was more than enough to cover Maxie’s and my living expenses. But I doubt she would have carried it through anyway; she can be downright cruel at times, when she deems it necessary, but her heart’s always in the right place.”

I didn’t quite agree with him on that matter, but then again, I was in the midst of dealing with her ‘cruel yet necessary’ punishment, so I wasn’t exactly unbiased. As for the rest of his story, though... I was impressed. As hard as things had been for me growing up, I was too crappy of a hunter to have been able to support myself at his age, let alone one of my younger siblings.

I rested my head on Iron’s shoulder. “Well, I’m glad things turned out okay.”

He put his forearm around me and agreed, “That they did.”

We sat like that for a while, and even though it was peaceful, it was getting dark. I didn’t want to fall asleep on him, at any rate, so I got up, and as usual, he offered to walk me to the gate.

Far off in the distance, about half a mile away, I saw Iron’s sister turn on to the street and head north. Or at least, she was making an effort; in reality, she was finding it difficult to walk. Iron must have seen her, too, because he told me in a resolute voice, “You should head east.” He wasn’t completely authoritative, but there was a level of sternness to his voice that made me feel it was more than a suggestion.

At first, I resented being ordered around like that, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt that there was something else going on to make him as angry as he was. We rushed a goodbye and I turned left to double back north so I could head to the east gate. I felt sad to leave him like that, but at the same time, we had an understanding that he was going to be the one to tell his sister that we were dating. From what he told me, she knew that we were hanging out together, just not that we were romantically involved. When I thought about the game that Iron was playing, I felt a twinge of empathy for my older brother.

When I got to the main street that ran east and west through Farrington, I regretted that Iron and I didn’t have a chance to try and work on kissing some more. To say the least, it was as interesting a challenge as it was intimate. With a mote of self-loathing, I figured his mouth was grateful for the break from me.

Even as I passed through the east gate and exited the city, I had a hard time saying the night went poorly; it just ended abruptly. I had caused enough problems for him already that I could forgive him if he wanted to keep me a secret from his sister.

When it came down to it, Iron was a lot more guarded than I had thought when we first started dating. What I liked was that in spite of that, he was starting to open up to me, and I was glad to share his memories with him.

*              *              *

On Monday morning, Iron apologized for how abruptly our weekend date had ended.

I shrugged. “I don’t like it, but she’s your sister. It’s your call if you don’t want to tell her stuff, just... secrets are tricky, don’t let all blow up in your face.” I was glad to finally have some life experience that I could counsel Iron with.

He chuckled. “Is that a griffin proverb?”

“Not really. It’s just exactly what happened with Dash and me.” I rapped a gauntlet on my chestplate, to reference the stripe that was underneath it.

His smile faded and he nodded somberly. “I know my situation and how volatile it is. I just need to handle Maxie when it’s the right time. Until then,” he said with an apologetic look, “thank you for putting up with everything.”

I grinned at him, but I didn’t go into his booth before I headed to the citadel to start my shift. Like usual, I was a few minutes early when I stood across the desk from Sherry to hear my morning orders. That morning, though, she deviated from the norm; instead of just saying where my patrol was, she gave me a hesitant look before she started speaking. “It’s been two weeks, Officer. Have you forgotten about Officer Weatherly?”

Kind of, I admitted. Instead of saying that, I decided to be proactive. “Uh, how’s the best way of going about doing that?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Well, you can form words to ask that question, so you know how to talk...” She paused, apparently deciding it wasn’t worth it to berate me. “Be sincere; if you jerk him around, I’ll jerk your schedule around, just to prove a point. As for his schedule, you met him on-duty, so you know when and where to meet him. His shift is from eight to four, and if you need any more help...” She tapered off again, this time letting the silence insult me in that hypothetical.

“I’ll do it tonight, after the orphanage,” I promised.

Sherry nodded at me, and there it was again – she had a look like she wanted to say something but was holding back. “Is there anything else, Sherry?” It felt strange to call her by her first name when she was the one responsible for most of  my punishments, but she disliked being called ‘ma’am’ to the point of hostility, so I kept the peace between us as best as I knew how to.

“There’s something unrelated to your officer’s duties that I want you to do, but I can’t really order you to do it. At the same time, I hate asking personal favors from officers.”

That was blunt. She only wanted a favor, though, so there was no harm in asking: I didn’t have to do anything if I didn’t want to. “What don’t you want to ask me to do?” I offered, hoping to appease her preferences.

She grinned like I had found a loophole in her worldview. “I don’t want to ask you to talk to Starfall about Iron. Things broke down on a personal level between them, but you’ve got a conversation starter to try and make things right between the two of you.”

I remembered how Iron had wanted something similar from me, but he hadn’t really pressed the issue since the first time he brought it up. Still, I owed it to my boyfriend to at least try to do my part toward coexisting with his best friend. “I’ll think about it,” was all that I would promise, “but I don’t know where to find him even if I did want to give him his knife back.”

Sherry nodded, picked up a piece of paper from her desk, and handed it to me. “Be here at eleven o’ clock on Saturday.” I looked at the paper; an address was written on it. I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of going to talk to someone who tried to kill me at what I guessed was his home, but I still had five days to decide whether or not I wanted to do it.

*              *              *

Later that night, like usual, I was hungry after my community service. As I walked back to the main street, I regretted that Iron was home, probably for the night, but I supposed that I had something to do still before I was done for the day anyway. By the time I was finished with my apology, it would be too late for Iron and I to do anything anyway.

I sat under the southern archway, as that was the main access point to get up to the top of the wall where Officer Weatherly was stationed. As eight o’ clock grew nearer and nearer, I became more and more aware of the fact that I did not want to apologize to him. Whatever his reasoning had been, he had wantonly thrown out a personal insult that had struck me on a fairly low level. However, I also recognized that, by letter of the law, I had threatened to kill him over it; even though it had been more of an angry reaction than a serious threat, I was still accountable for my actions.

Finally, he and eleven other guards marched through the front door of the citadel. The group broke into three smaller groups, one for each of the three gates to the city. I thought at first that it didn’t really matter which access point they took to get to their posts, but I supposed it was faster to fan out and take the main roads, especially at an hour when there wasn’t that many ponies outdoors.

Anyway, Weatherly was headed towards me, and I fumed at the prospect of humiliating myself in front of three other guards. They had already seen me, though, so it was too late for me to lurk out of sight and wait for him to go up to his post.

When they got to me, the group split into half: two guards went to the opposite side of the gate, and Weatherly came over to my side with another guard. He didn’t stay in the archway, though, so through some stroke of luck, I was alone with Officer Weatherly.

He seemed understanding, if I had to put a single word to it. His tone was apologetic when he said, “Sergeant Harmon said you’d come talk to me during my shift.”

“Yeah,” I confirmed, feeling a bit uneasy at how he was acting. “My sergeant’s wants me to apologize for what happened on...” The date blanked in my mind. “Well, you know the night. Anyway, yeah, I shouldn’t have gone there with a retort... or been here in the first place,” I combined a shrug as I gestured to the wall above us.

Weatherly smiled. “Public enemy number one, huh?” After a pause he continued, “Starfall’s a good guy if you get to know him, but yeah, it doesn’t take a platinum alchemist to guess who threw the first hoof in that fight. Anyway, I was in a pretty bad mood myself that night; I probably deserved a bit of crap back after throwing out what I did. I only went to get the Captain ‘cause it’s procedure when someone or something breaches the wall, but yeah.” He gestured to himself. “I’m sorry to you for how I painted everything, and now it’s got all blown out of proportion.”

He pulled his hoof away from his chest and held it out. I grabbed it, and we shook the conflict behind us.

After that, we said goodbye and he went through the door to head up to his post. By then, the meal I had gotten after my patrol had almost completely worn off, so given that I didn’t have plans that night, I took off south for home.

The entire time I was in the air, I felt relieved that the whole thing had gone so smoothly. Also, I had to admit that even though it was fairly low-key, at least in comparison to everything else that had happened, I did feel better for apologizing. It was that, more than anything, that made me agree to Sherry’s personal request, so I started to think about just what I was going to say.

*        *        *

Friday after my shift, Sherry and I had gone over our plan, or really, her plan for one last time. I had an hour-long window when Starfall would be home alone, which, given what set off our present situation, was probably going to be the best chance we would have for participating in a ‘dialogue’, as Iron called it.

So, Saturday morning, just to be sure, I waited until a few minutes after eleven before walking up to Starfall’s house. It was a nice-looking place, even if the lawn was slightly unkempt and the garden was in need of a good watering. I rolled my eyes at myself; two months in the city, and suddenly I was an expert on landscaping.

I knocked on his door with the fist that was holding his knife, which I hadn’t really been too keen on keeping in the first place. I heard hooffalls coming to the door and a pair of locks being undone; I felt nervous enough that time seemed to slow down. Finally, Starfall opened his door, and we glared at each other for a few seconds. It was more of a theatrical reaction on my part instead of actually trying to intimidate him; while I waited for him to make the first move, I was really just noting how our eyes were pretty close to the same shade of amber.

Finally, he got the hint. “What are you doing at my house?” His voice sounded livid, but given the extent of his rage that I had prepared for, it almost sounded neutral, at least for him.

I had been anticipating this conversation for a week, though, so he didn’t even come close to catching me off-guard. “I’m here to talk. And give this back.” I waved his knife a few times for emphasis. He reached for it, but I pulled it back to me. “But talking first. Or I’ve got a friend in the Artisan district that I’m sure wouldn’t mind doing a smelting job for me.” I didn’t like threatening him, but I also didn’t want him slamming the door in my face, either.

His eyes narrowed. “Say your piece and leave, then.”

I still didn’t know whether he was only mildly pissed or if he was just weary. I went with the latter, because that’s how I felt about the situation. “It’s been almost four weeks. I know you’re not exactly the type to forgive and forget, but still. Iron’s sorry. He hasn’t heard anything back from you, though. He misses you as a friend.”

Starfall scoffed. “So, he’s sending his...” He caught himself from saying what I was. “You over?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m here on my own. Granted, I’m still not sure who’s to blame for everything between us. There’s you, for holding me responsible for what happened to your wife. There’s me, for fighting back. There’s Iron and Sherry, for not telling me everything in the first place–”

“There’s the sick piece of shit that did it to her in the first place,” his words hissed out of him like steam. “Or are you just going to forget about what something from your tribe did?”

I frowned at his accusation. “I’m talking about things between us. If the one responsible for all of this actually planned for us to meet like this...” I shook my head, even though there was a tiny, irrational part of me that feared it to be true.

I couldn’t think of what else to say, so I let Starfall take a turn. He waited for at least thirty long seconds before he finally sighed and shook his head down at the ground. “Who was it?”

“It was my father,” I blurted out without thinking. I saw his eyes widen as it registered, so I continued in as quick a voice I could manage without devolving into a panic, “Everything you can say that’s wrong with my race probably applies to him.” I felt myself speaking quicker and quicker as I was suddenly uncomfortable with where this conversation was headed. “I’m not saying that it excuses him, just... don’t go thinking you’re the only one who’s had to put up with his brutality.” I was trembling now, if only slightly.

Starfall’s eyes narrowed. “You can still fly, I don’t think–”

Before I knew what had happened, I punched him straight in the nose. Surprise turned to rage as reflexive tears welled up in his eyes, but he had finally succeeded in making me angry. “Oh,” I exhaled in a shuddering breath, “You weren’t fast enough to dodge that? Spend a night outside when it’s winter, then.” I took a short breath. “I made a fire so I wouldn’t die. It took two months for the fur to start growing back on my leg after he shoved me into it; just in time for him to break my arm for the seventh time.” My own tears were flowing now as I pointed at him with one of the fingers on my fist. “So don’t act like you even know what things were like.”

We stood in silence for a few moments after that. Starfall was aghast, and I... had no idea where that memory had come from. I wanted to scream, to run away, but I needed to hold it together for a few more minutes. Conflicted emotions raced across Starfall’s face, so I tried to put on a brave face and finish what I had come to do. “N... none of that matters anymore, though. It’s in the past. I’m not going to be a hypocrite and ask you to get over everything.” I paused to hold out his knife. “But all I can say is I’m sorry for what I did to you. So are you just willing to coexist?”

For his part, Starfall was still standing there looking like I grew a second head. He blinked some of the shock out of his face, tried to say something, shook his head, and finally muttered, “Yes, then.”

He took his knife back and I turned to go. “Gilda,” I heard him call out my name quietly. I turned my head and met his gaze. “I–” he swallowed his apology and instead requested, “Tell your boyfriend I said ‘Hello.’”

I realized that was as close to an actual apology as I was going to get. I nodded before I turned back around, and heard his door close behind me.

Iron’s sister was out of town that weekend, so we had decided to meet up at our pond at two o’ clock that afternoon to get a good six hours’ worth of time with each other. I headed there early, too miserable to eat, and the clock struck the half-hour when I was almost there. Blithely, I thought about how efficient I had been in apologizing and how it was easier to walk without holding his knife in one hand.

Realistically, I wondered if it had been worth it.

I sat down near my favorite pole on the banister of the bridge and I started to watch the waterfall. I lost myself in its steady motion, but that just calmed me down enough to actually process what had happened with Starfall. I clasped my leg, and sure enough, some of the skin there was uneven and raised in a burn scar... but I had forgotten about that entire episode until it came out in a furious rant.

On some of the loneliest days when I was alone with my thoughts in my cave, I had always wondered if I would ever be able to forget everything that Father had done to me growing up. Now that I actually had lost some memories, though, I was afraid of just how many of them were gone.

I stared at my closed door for a few moments after Iron’s girlfriend left. I still trying to wrap my head around everything that had happened, but I kept coming back to the same point:

She was psychotic.

Before I could get any farther along in the thought process, my nose dripping something warm. I set my knife down on a table and rushed to the bathroom with my hoof clapped over my nose so I could care of my injury before Comet and the kids got back. After about five minutes of dabbing blood away from my nose, I gave up and stuffed half of a tissue, wadded up, into my nostril. It wasn’t an elegant fix, but I could both breathe and move around the house without making a mess, so it was good enough. With mild irritation, I realized that, between my nose and the scar on my right cheek, Iron’s girlfriend was starting to take her toll on my face.

Shaking my head, I returned to the foyer. I had been quick enough in handling my nosebleed that I hadn’t left any stains on the floor, so at least there was the added victory of not having to clean up anything after that ‘apology’. I was behind on my chores already, and didn’t have time to waste getting punched in the face by an emotionally-unstable griffin.

On that note, I needed to take care of the grass outside. Before I did, though, I had to decide what to do with my knife. It meant a lot to me, even if I wasn’t sure what exact sentiments it represented anymore. I didn’t want to throw it away, obviously, but I didn’t want to wear it anymore, either. It was also evidence of the visit that had just happened; that was a decidedly ‘adult’ event, so I resigned to shut it away in a drawer in my bedside table until later that night, when Comet and I were getting ready for bed.

Finally, almost forty minutes after my family had left me on their regular weekly outing, it was time to start the process of mowing the grass. I went out to the small shed behind our house and got out the push-mower. I took it to the front lawn and started tracing rows in the green overgrowth. Cutting the grass like that was a slow process, but especially with everything that had happened recently, we weren’t in any position to afford a better solution. We didn’t have any unicorn friends who were any good at lawn care, either.

Plus, I thought as I reached the end of a row, that just seems like a rude thing to ask. Granted, I used to not mind if one of our neighbors asked me to help get something off their roof, but the ‘no-fly’ laws were as strict as they were archaic. After I had been fined for flying up to my own rooftop – too quick for the netters, I supposed – I had cut off that line of favors and instead bought a ladder, like everyone else in Farrington.

Mowing the lawn was a mindless task, as long as I kept the lines straight. I felt myself getting tired, but that was probably more on account of the amount of effort it took to heal bones than it was the strain of the labor. At any rate, it left my mind free to wander. Not surprisingly, the first thing that came to mind was that morning’s visit from Iron’s girlfriend.

And that’s all she would ever be to me.

On a deep level, I felt sorry for Iron. She was his first girlfriend, at least since I met him, and she was also insane. I knew I could be irrational at times, as evidenced by the pink casts on my wings, but there was a vast difference between that and just completely switching emotions at the drop of a hat – or the mention of an individual.

Her father, I sneered. It didn’t come to me as that grand of a surprise that she was somehow related to the monster that attacked Comet. As much as I wanted to hate her for it, though, I just couldn’t. I hadn’t even spoken with her, outside of a few times while we were both on-duty, but those had been more about establishing boundaries. She had a right, as an officer, to defer to my authority on certain matters, but I also had rights that could be used to demonstrate to her that it wasn’t worth her time to bother me.

It had been a simple solution, and it had worked until I saw her talking with my family in the Market district. I still maintained that, though I would handle it in a different manner if it ever happened again, she had no right to be near my wife or children, not after everything her father had done to our family. It wasn’t a matter of fault, though; it was more a matter of decency.

I couldn’t hate her, though. If anything, my leave from the Guard had taught me that it wasn’t worth the emotional investment to hate someone. But on a deeper level, I began to understand her situation. She was some sort of outcast from her own society and, from what she told me today, her father was one of those monsters that liked to treat their children as punching bags instead of their own flesh and blood. I didn’t hate her. I would never like her. But I could pity her for her situation, one of never having a place where she belonged.

I finished the front lawn and moved to the back. Comet and the kids weren’t home yet, but they would probably finish their Saturday morning chores before I did. That was fine by me, though; I didn’t have anything left to do for the rest of the day, and though that meant I’d have the afternoon free to spend with my children, we wouldn’t have much of an opportunity to do anything until after Comet made lunch for us, anyway.

As I started mowing the backyard, I gave serious thought to visiting Iron soon. He had stopped attempting to contact me, which I regretted, but I wasn’t worried about our friendship anymore. He was walking into a minefield, dating an abuse victim, and I cared about him too deeply to let him do it blindly. He was smart enough, I had to admit, so I knew he could deal with it; my concern only lied with the fact that he knew how emotionally unstable she really was.

By the time my family finally turned onto our street, I was raking up the the clippings from the front lawn. When they passed through our gate, I hugged my children and asked Comet if everything had been all right at the store.

“It was fine, just busy,” she replied. “One of your former sergeants was there and asking about you, I told her you were doing better.”

I thought about asking who it was, but I had begun to realize that it was time to start putting my time in the Guard behind me. I would find work, once I was fully healed, and we would all move on with our lives. I nodded, then reported, “Anyway, I’m almost done with the yard.”

Comet gave me a quick smile at that, but she took the kids inside to help put away groceries before she could say anything else. I sighed. I sympathized with Iron as much as I could, in terms of his girlfriend, but at the same time, I had to take care of things at my own house first.

At any rate, he’d already managed his relationship for a few months without me. He must have been doing something right. I wished him luck as I finished up in my yard, but more dominant in my mind was the fact that I wanted to eventually pay him a visit anyway.

I showed up to the pond almost half an hour early for my date with Gilda, but she was already waiting there and looking miserable. I prepared to be strong for her, and even though I regretted that we probably weren’t going to have a ‘happy’ date, I was ready to be there for her.

At any rate, I didn’t think a cheery ‘Hello’ would suit her mood, so sat down quietly on her left. I didn’t even get my subdued greeting out before she latched on to me in a silent embrace. I could breathe, but she was pinning my front legs to my body, so I couldn’t hold her back; instead, I bent my foreleg up to pat her arm as comfortingly as I could manage.

We stayed like that until the clock tower struck two and she finally broke her silence with “Hi.”

Despite our situation, I chuckled. “This is the longest greeting I have ever been a part of.”

She sat back up, which freed my right arm. I put it around her shoulders as she gave me a weak grin back. “It’s been a long morning.”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind hearing about it,” I replied, which was the truth.

I sat and listened as she recounted her morning apology to Starfall, which struck me with a feeling of regret: I was his best friend, yet someone who had only known him for two months had beaten me to visit him with an apology. Granted, he had put up one of his typical walls between the two of us, but that wasn’t an excuse; from how he ended their conversation, it was clear that he was ready to talk to me.

I vowed that I would visit him with that intention after dinner that night.

What disturbed Gilda, though, was the fact that she had unearthed a repressed memory from her childhood. I tried to comfort her as best as I could, but I was distracted by two worries that crossed my mind. The lesser concern was guilt that I had somehow triggered this by giving her something to remember her past by; I put that aside with a combination of my good intentions and lack of responsibility in the underlying situation. Also, I preferred for her to deal with her problems in the open and she had told me several times over the past week that she enjoyed my gift, so I didn’t think I needed to apologize for getting it for her.

The more important thing that worried me, though, was the... extent of abuse that her father had put her through. I wasn’t incredibly concerned with being her first sexual partner, if things ever got that far between us; however, I knew that victims of sexual abuse often had intimacy problems. I had my own desires in that aspect of our relationship, but if she wasn’t ready for them, then I could wait, especially given that it was only two months into our relationship.

Either way, it was an incredibly delicate situation, one that her usually-preferred bluntness wouldn’t help me with. When she finished refuting my initial attempts to condole her apparent memory loss, I started to change the subject to my own. “I don’t want to sound imprudent or morbidly curious, Gilda, but what exactly did that monster do to you?”

She raised an eyebrow for a moment. “What, now you want a list?”

I had been trapped by my past words, so I owned up to them. “I find the idea of an abusive father to be repugnant and evil. But I’m not doing you any favors by making you hold everything in around me, either.” After a pause, I finished, “I’d like to be on the same page.”

Gilda tilted her head slightly, but she looked out at the waterfall for a while before saying anything. “This whole thing tells me I don’t remember everything, even if I can’t decide whether or not I like that.” She paused, and I saw by her expression it wasn’t easy for her. Nonetheless, she continued, “He didn’t use his talons that often, I guess. He was more... fond of bruises and broken bones. Then, I guess there was the weird mental stuff he’d pull, like making me sleep outside or other things he’d make me do...”

I made no effort to hide my concern about the vagueness of that last point, so she turned to me with a slight cringe. “Not like that...” Recognition crossed her face, and she asked, “Wait, is that what you were getting at?” She sounded perturbed, if not accusatory.

I bowed my head slightly and held up my left hoof. “Like I said, I wanted to better understand your situation. If that had been a part of it, then yes, I wanted to know.”

By her quiet nod, I supposed that my answer satisfied her. She continued, “But no, he made me do things that usually centered around... fighting, or surviving. It was almost like...” She reeled her head back slightly and her eyes widened in comprehension. “Like training, I guess. I mean, I don’t like to think about it, but at the same time, part of me can’t help but feel he was planning to use me for something. But, somewhere along the line, I failed, so he had to... start over.”

Her voice cracked as she finished, and I pulled her into a closer hug.

As I rested my chin on the top of her head, I thought about what she said. If her theory was correct, then I knew exactly what she meant by ‘start over’. From what she had told me, she had almost twenty siblings; if her father had been breeding a personal army... I buried my rage before it made me shake. Gilda needed someone to finally care for her, not to be angry at what she had said.

At her request, we cancelled dinner for that night. She didn’t want to eat, she wanted to “think about things.” I regretted that she was leaving so early; Maxie was gone for the weekend, and as I didn’t have to account for my whereabouts, we would have had the entire afternoon and evening to ourselves. However, if Gilda needed her space, then I had to respect that.

She was subdued on our standard trip to the southern gate, but she wasn’t cold to me. Proof of that came under the archway, when she leaned up to me for a kiss. I bent my head down to meet her. Kissing her was a delicate procedure that required a certain measure of precision, or at least, I made it that way. The easier route would have been for me to simply hold her beak in my bared teeth so our tongues could caress; I was of the firm conviction, though, that there was a certain way that I could manage to bring my lips flush with the edge of her beak to make it as close to a kiss as possible.

Regardless of the practice that it required, we leaned in closer to one another, turned our heads slightly, and our mouths met. Her tongue was smaller than mine, but it was much firmer. As before, I was struck by how incredibly salty it tasted; as she traced a circle around the edge of my tongue, a mild tingling sensation was left behind. There was only so long we could kiss for before my tongue would go numb, but I wanted to keep going as long as possible. I closed my eyes and pulled her in closer, relishing the feeling of her subtle gasp that came in response as she tightened her embrace.

I wanted more, to continue, but reason overcame my desires. She was willing for romance, yes, but she also had troubles that she wanted to sort out alone. I couldn’t keep her from dealing with them, and she had already denied my earlier to offer to help her.

When I felt her stop, I knew it was over, so I broke away. My lips still had some feeling left in them, but I couldn’t feel any lacerations, so I thought I had been successful in avoiding injury during our kiss. As soon as I moved my mouth to test my theory, though, a sharp pain in my upper lip told me that I had indeed failed. Gilda craned her neck up and, in a manner that was oddly sensual, she licked my mouth where the cut was. Fire ran through the injury, but as past experience had taught me, it was no longer bleeding.

I worked my tongue around vigorously to try and restore sensation to it, but it was a futile effort. When Gilda said “Goodbye” in a low voice, all I could do was wave back, so as not to speak like an idiot.

After she left and was out of sight, I reluctantly turned my attention to other matters. I started on the trip to the north end of town, where Starfall lived. It was a fairly long distance, but as I wanted to speak with him, I would need the time for my tongue to recover.

When I looked at a clock, I saw that it wasn’t even four o’clock yet. I regretted that Gilda had left as early as she had. At the same time, I realized that if she had stayed, I wouldn’t have had time to visit my friend. It was fortunate, in that regard; I had gone long enough without speaking to my friend.

I was in the front yard with my two children, and it had already been one of the best days in recent memory for me. My stamina wasn’t back to full capacity yet, but I could play with my children for longer than fifteen minutes, so that was certainly an improvement over the past few weeks.

The game we were playing didn’t have many rules; it was mostly a ground-based flurry of kicking a ball around and trying to keep possession it for a while. There were no goalposts or scores; we were just having fun, and I loved every minute of it.

Through a combination of my position and the amount of attention I was paying to the street, I didn’t see when a visitor stopped by to watch us. It was Moonshine who noticed him first, and she called out, “Hi Uncle Iron!”

He waved back and said, “Hello!” a bit thickly, on account of the cut on his lip. In spite of everything that had happened between us and the echoes of resentment that I still felt, I felt myself grin; he had probably been trying to eat salad with a paring knife or something stupid like that, all in the name of furthering culinary science.

Both of my children asked him to come play with us. He looked to me first, and I gave him a quick nod; only after that did he agree to their request. With four players, we split into two teams and played a more structured game of soccer; it was still fun despite the additional rules we had to abide by.

Comet came out into the yard at five-thirty to tell us that dinner was almost ready; she looked at Iron and gave him a warm greeting and invited him to join us. Again, he looked to me for permission and again, I gave it. I had gone long enough without speaking to my friend, and he had the added fortune of catching me in the best mood I had been in for weeks.

For her part, my wife figured out that I wanted to talk to Iron alone before we ate; she took the kids back inside with her, so Iron and I were left alone with each other. Once it was just the two of us, though, I was caught in the irony of having so much I wanted to say that I didn’t know where to start. Iron was silent also, so I guessed that he was experiencing the same thing, and we spent a few awkward seconds trying to figure out just how to start the conversation.

Finally, I decided something simple. “What happened to your lip?”

He grinned and chuckled softly. “It’s ironic you ask that to break the ice, because I don’t want to offend your sensibilities.”

I was annoyed at how cryptic he was being at first. My sensibilities? I pondered before I realized that his girlfriend had been in town that morning, so she had probably visited him during the afternoon. I kind of felt sorry for the kid; I had pushed his girlfriend over some sort of emotional cliff, so he didn’t get to spend the evening with her. Still, he had gotten something out of their time together, even though I found their relationship to be inherently wrong on several levels.

However, over the past week or so, I had come to the decision that I could swallow some of my ‘sensibilities’ in order to be a more supportive friend. I nodded my comprehension and touched my mouth, “Right, the, uh... beak.” After a pause threatened to turn back into awkward silence, I asked, “How have you been?”

“I’ve been okay,” he said with a subtle head bob that made me think he was being optimistic. “Things with Gilda have been going smoothly, give or take a few bumps in the road; things at home are fine, save for the fact that my sister is an alcoholic whore; and the Guard is...” He shrugged, as if he wanted to spare me the details.

I was intrigued to hear him speak so flippantly about his sister’s problems, though. “What happened with Maxie?”

“I caught her stumbling through the streets, drunk, and warned her that if it happened again, I’d put her in a cell for, you know, breaking the law. Apparently, that’s worth a week’s worth of silence, or close to it; she left Friday morning on a delivery.” I heard the disdain in his voice. “So I only had to put up with her brooding for five days out of the last six.”

“Ouch,” I said as sincerely as I could. From what I had heard, she lived a quiet life in Farrington; this was the first time that I had heard about any sort of debauchery of hers within the city walls.

Iron nodded, but he changed the subject. “How are things with you?”

I thought about it for a moment before answering. Things with Comet were going better than they had in a while; there was still a wall between us, but we were working on it. She wanted to see a counselor; I wanted to try things out for ourselves first before we let some outsider run our marriage. Still, though... “Things are going well,” I admitted. “Medical pension isn’t the greatest source of income and recovery is an exhausting process, but I’ve got my family to help me through the worst of it.”

An apologetic look passed over Iron’s face. I realized what he was about to say, so I tried to beat him to it; the end result was that we spoke in unison when we told each other, “I’m sorry.”

He started on his specifics first. “I shouldn’t have just backhanded you away from the scene like that. It was preferential treatment for my girlfriend over you, and you deserve better than that. I’m also sorry that I put off visiting you for a long time; yes, I wanted to help Comet so she could come visit you, but I still could have shown up afterward.”

I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have started the fight in the first place, and I wasn’t exactly making myself easy to visit. I shouldn’t have attacked your objectivity like that; you know you’ve got a conflict of interest, so you’re probably working as hard as you can to act unbiased.”

“That was the incident that made me realized I wasn’t, though,” came his reply.

I nodded, “Okay, then. But I’m sorry I stabbed your girlfriend.” I didn’t want to offend him by being silly, but I couldn’t help tinting my words with mock stubbornness.

Iron chuckled before offering, “I believe, then, that we can agree to put the whole thing behind us?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. Hearing his apologies and joking with him did a lot to remind me of just how much I missed my friendship with him. He was an important figure in my children’s lives, too; I didn’t want to deprive them of that because of what amounted to a pointless grudge.

We grinned together for a moment before Iron’s expression turned serious. “The only thing I have left to do on the matter is ask you what you want to do in regards to the Guard.”

I blinked at him. Here he was saying he was working on objectivity in his position, and he was offering me a job as part of an apology? I shook my head. “I assaulted a subordinate officer and then a civilian... should I even be allowed back?”

He spoke plainly, “Your service record speaks for itself; you’re not a bad guard. But if you come back, there would be punishments to deal with. Your tenure as a lieutenant has definitely expired.”

Even though I knew I deserved it, I still felt the sting of those words in my stomach. I was going to be demoted; the only question was how far down in the ranks I would fall. I didn’t know how hopeful to be in asking, so I decided to err on the side of optimism. “So, a sergeant, then?”

Iron nodded, to my relief. “And...” He looked at the sky for a minute as he considered something. “It would have to be during the day. But no, Lieutenant Scales is doing as adequately as can be expected; Sergeant Walker... is a better officer than he is a sergeant.”

I cringed with the obviousness; I could have told Iron that. Still, a day shift meant having to interact with my wife again for the entire evening instead of just a few hours in the afternoon. I looked back at my house. Comet and I were working on rebuilding our marriage, so I admitted, “A day shift... wouldn’t be the worst thing. Are there any patrols open?”

Apparently, it was an awkward question. He clenched his teeth slightly before responding, “Well, I’d have to move them around a little so as to not test your resolve too early, or too often, but as long as you can keep on top of your clerical duties, sure.”

I nodded understanding on both points: I didn’t think I would ever become friends with his girlfriend, so at best, sharing a patrol would just be awkward for us. As for the mountain of paperwork that would await me every day at the end of my shift... from experience, I knew that I preferred it that way instead of just remaining idle for ten hours.

Iron smiled. “Your sergeant’s armor is still in the armory.” He looked at the top of my head, once again noting how I was slightly taller out of the two of us. “Though we might have to get it refitted.” He looked back down at eye level and asked, “When will you be able to rejoin us?”

It was a good question; I was still injured, after all. If I was taking an active position, at the rate I was progressing, it would probably be at least another week before I could start. “Not tomorrow,” I admitted, “but maybe next Monday.”

“Let’s say two weeks, then, to be sure,” he corrected me. “I mean, your medical pension isn’t depleted yet; I don’t want you to hurt yourself by pushing too hard, too fast.”

“Fair enough,” I agreed. I made a note in my mind; today was the fifteenth, so that would be... the thirty-first.

He held out a hoof. “Welcome back to the Farrington Guard then, Sergeant Starfall.”

I grabbed it, but not to shake it; I pulled him into a quick colt’s hug – two pats, that was the unspoken rule that we abode by. Besides, we had both been running out in the sun for a few hours; at that point, it was more a survival mechanism than frivolous machismo.

After we broke apart, we stood around in a brief silence before I realized I was a host and he was my guest. “We should head inside for dinner, if there’s anything hot left.”

Iron chuckled. “Exceptional food is only necessary in lieu of good company.”

I smiled at that proverb. He had probably read it somewhere, but it certainly fit our situation well. I led him into my house, glad for the opportunity to share what would probably be lukewarm food with a good friend.

It was late in the evening. Iron had gone home after his reconciliatory dinner with my husband, and Hailey and Moonshine were asleep. Starfall was in the bathroom brushing his teeth, but I was already in bed, looking out at the moon. It looked different now; it was brighter after the ‘Mare in the Moon’ incident that happened near Canterlot early last autumn, when a ragtag group of teenagers saved Equestria from eternal darkness. However silly it sounded, there was the moon, without its unicorn-shaped blemish, and now we had two princesses instead of one.

Even though I was on my side, I shrugged with my top shoulder. Canterlot, the moon... everything was so far away sometimes. Equestria had a vastly-powerful alicorn leader – two of them, now – but there were still hospitals, orphanages, and the Guard.

As if he were reading my thoughts, Starfall finished up in the bathroom, came over to our bed, and got in. I was still lost in my thoughts, so I didn’t acknowledge his presence at first, but I was definitely glad that he had made amends with his friend-turned-boss and the guard that he assaulted; I wasn’t thrilled with how ‘lucky’ she had been in managing to find my husband alone, though. I supposed that was just how griffins were; what was ‘crafty’ to us might be ‘polite’ to them.

At any rate, Starfall had his job back. We didn’t discuss much about the situation in front of the kids, but a sergeant’s wages combined with ten years of annual raises... I shook my head in incredulous relief. It wasn’t going to be that much of a difference, money-wise, but if Starfall hadn’t gotten his head out of his ass at just the right moment, things could have turned out a lot worse than they did.

I felt my husband turn over more than I heard it, but I knew he was facing me now. “So, good news today, huh?”

I chuckled darkly as I shook my head again. “That’s one way to put it.”

There was a brief pause, followed by, “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s wrong?”

I glared at the wall. “What’s wrong is how close you came to losing your job over... what, because your feelings got hurt? Because you were right and Iron was wrong?” I wanted to keep going, but I was too tired from worrying about everything. Instead, I just vented my anger in an exasperated sigh.

There was a moment of silence, then I heard him make a frustrated grunt. Finally, he sighed and asked, “Do you remember what I told you after your injury?”

“Yeah, well now that I understand why you thought that–”

“I told you I would support you, and I meant it. It wasn’t because you weren’t able to support yourself anymore, it was because I brought you here in the first place. I would have hated the mines, or working at a store... but it still would have been me working.”

The softness and sincerity of his voice... I had a hard time staying angry with him. He was still being condescending about the whole ordeal, but I had to admit that it wasn’t because he meant to offend me. He felt guilty over what had happened, even though it wasn’t his fault... I wanted to note that it had been ten years, but then again, I couldn’t really say that my husband was the type of colt to let things go. “It’s been so long ago,” I offered, “do you remember how angry my parents were with you?”

“Were? Didn’t they refer to me as ‘that ass of a colt you married’ in their Hearth’s Warming card last winter?”

I smiled at the epithet; it was almost a term of endearment at this point. Or at least I hoped so; if they blamed Starfall for what happened to me, then there was some justification for his self-righteous guilt. “They took things harder than your mom did.”

Behind me, Starfall chuckled. “Well, she’s finding it easier to live as a ‘single mother’ now that I’m not there, at least.” His voice turned pensive and quiet. “I should write her soon, it’s been a while now.”

As he thought about correspondence with his mother, I went back to the past with a sense of nostalgia. Our first six months in Farrington had been unsteady, but passable. Both of us worked our jobs, and even though I was out on deliveries a lot, Starfall had always been there and happy when I came home to him. I missed those days, when we had been young and stupid and loved each other.

But I was also glad they were gone, in some ways. I remembered how, a few months after my injury, on our wedding day, I had freaked out because my gown didn’t fit anymore – Moonshine had been on her way, and that hadn’t done any favors for my waistline. Star had cheered me up by ripping his vest in half and vowing that, screw it, we’d both get married naked.

I smiled as I remembered Iron’s cautious tone as he later asked, “Wasn’t that a rental?”

Soberly, I noted how I probably wouldn’t have been there that day if I hadn’t been attacked. It wasn’t that I hadn’t completely opposed the idea, it was just that, without my wings, I was more eager to settle down and start a life that was more grounded in reality. Now, ten years later, I didn’t quite know how I felt about the entire situation. “You know,” I whispered quietly, “I don’t want to accuse that monster of doing us any favors... but it’s interesting, how settling down turned out.”

I felt myself being pulled backwards into an embrace, but I didn’t do anything to stop Starfall. He wrapped his forelimbs around my stomach and whispered, “I’m sorry for my part of how things turned out.”

I rested my hooves on top of his. I wanted the affection to be real, to be deep, but he would never get over what happened if he kept blaming himself. I whispered back, “It’s not all your fault, Star. Try to remember that.”

He kissed me in the crook of my neck, which was my favorite token of affection from him. He pulled back a little to whisper three quiet words. “I love you.”

It was nice, being held like that, and having sweet nothings whispered into my ear. I had seen this side of Starfall too often to believe it at face value, though. I wanted to believe him, when he said he was going to try better, but I just didn’t trust him as much as I needed to.

We still had a lot of work to do. We had a lot of barriers to overcome. However, I genuinely hoped that we could beat the odds, and one day, we would love each other again.

END CHAPTER NINE