Yes, I have heard of the Farisi, the gentle people. I have heard their females were graceful in flight, their males crested with golden feathers. I have been told we must learn from the Farisi.

The Blackbeaks say the Farisi made the best music, and that once every Blackbeak fledgling had a Farisi flute. But if you ask them to sing a Farisi song, they will smile and say they have all been forgotten.

These tales are foolish. I have seen that peak whose name is forgotten, midway between Brokebeak and the Claws. Its sulfurous stink reaches through thick clouds.

Its western edge is steep and rocky. This is the land one flies over on the updrafts. This is where the lookouts stood watching for Blackbeaks or Silvertails, and where they cried out Dull Claws' name when he returned from across the western sea.

Woods climb its eastern edge. A traveler drifting over it sees a thin gray line below the ridge. A yellow haze clings to the mountain's eastern side even on cloudless days.

The gray line is granite. The haze is smoke, foul like rotten eggs, rising from narrow cracks a claw's breadth across. The cracks stretch a hundred spans and more through the stone and earth around them. I could not see to their bottoms.

The riven stone is dry and hot. An egg broken upon it would soon turn hard and white.

The road's northern end curves uphill and ends in a great field of limestone covered with moss. Here the tribe sat while Dull Claws told them of the ponies, who lived across the sea in peace and harmony, neither killing nor being killed. He told them that the earth gave them more fruit and berries than they could gather, and the stones of the earth shaped themselves into great cities for their comfort. Here he told them of their leader, the great white Sun Mare.

In the center of the plaza stands a stone statue with no head, still twice as tall as a gryphon. Chisel cuts on its flanks mark an eight-pointed sun. The statue looks like a bear with wings. Its carver never saw a pony.

Little else remains. The Farisi built with wood.

In the brush below the road, queer vines cling to strange gnarled trees. Dull Claws brought their seeds from across the sea. In the fall the vines bear the sweet purple berries and the trees bear the hard, round, red fruit he told his tribe to eat instead of meat. The Blackbeaks say there were other fruit besides, and ground grains, and cooked roots, at the feast the Farisi threw for the Blackbeak to teach them of the white mare of peace. But the Farisi were thin from eating them.

The Blackbeaks still feast on that day every year, to remember.

North of where the village was, there is a hole in the ground that spews thick yellow-and-green smoke night and day. This is where the Farisi dug for the black burning rock which Dull Claws said gave the ponies great power. This is the hole the Blackbeak warriors threw Dull Claws into after they broke his wings. They filled it with wood and set it on fire, the same fire that burns in the mountain's belly today.

But no one knows if the Farisi had beautiful voices or golden crests. The chief of the Blackbeaks feared their weakness would infect his people. So he ordered their carvings burned, their pottery smashed, their males gelded and used as beasts of burden, and their females sold or kept to serve his soldiers and household. Their eggs fed his brood.

Every year on the feast of the Farisi, the holy one of the Blackbeaks brings out a box of bone flutes, and they play songs on them late into the night. I have seen these flutes with these two eyes. This is what is left of the Farisi.

So if someone bends your ear with stories saying the Farisi had golden crests, and voices like honey or like flutes, he is a fool and does not know the world. He would do well to learn from the Farisi.

Author's Notes:

Based on a true story, fictionalized in the novel and the movie Black Robe. From the writeoff "Best Laid Plans". Special thanks to Pascoite & bookplayer for their comments.

"The Gentle People" cover art is an edit of a scene from The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone (gryphons removed) combined with a crumbling statue of Celestia by SirCxyrtyx.