Tarnished Teapot awoke to the sensation of the wagon rocking back and forth. It took him several long confused seconds to come to the conclusion that the wagon was moving. He blinked a few times, trying to clear away the sleepy in his eyes, and then wiped his face with his fetlock to remove any eye boogers that might have accumulated while he slept. A warm body was pressed against his back.

He rolled over a bit, wiggling and squirming, but trying not to disturb the mare beside him. He touched her with his frog, trying to get a feel for her temperature. She wasn’t burning up, far from it. Her skin was cool to the touch, except for the places that had been pressed up against him. Her breathing was slow and regular. She didn’t appear to be sweaty.

The spell, even if he did not yet fully understand its many complexities, had worked. Feeling pleased, he yawned, then slid his body out of the bed. It took him a moment to find his balance. He wondered why Maud had chosen to take off.

Opening the door, he stepped outside, mindful of the moving wagon. He fell into a trot and made his way to Maud’s side. It was afternoon, getting late, and Maud was moving at a brisk trot, making good time. She looked a bit sweaty.

“You decided to go?” Tarnish asked as he trotted beside her.

“I sent Limestone home,” Maud replied, “and the pup too. There was no point in staying. It felt like there were eyes watching me, Tarnish, and I didn’t like it. I decided to go.”

Reaching out with his mind, Tarnish found his canteen inside the wagon, piled up with the rest of his gear. He levitated it out, pulled out the stopper, and offered it to Maud, so she could have a much needed drink.

When she was finished, and he went to get a drink to quench his own thirst, he noticed that it was now a little less than half full. He would need to fill it at some point. He could do it while walking if he had to. There was humidity in the air and moisture nearby, he could sense it, even though he couldn’t understand how he was doing so.

The shadows were long on the ground, the air was warm, and there was a pleasant breeze. There were flies about, Tarnish hated them, and there was a part of him that felt jealousy that it was socially acceptable for mares to have long tails and not stallions. Long tails made for better flyswatters.

“How is Trixie?” Maud asked after she licked her lips.

“She seems to be okay,” Tarnish replied. He lifted his head and let out a mighty yawn. As he walked, he levitated out his saddlebags, his sword, and his pith helmet. He began to strap everything on and geared up. Maud was right—he too, could feel eyes upon him. Something… predatory. He wondered if there were diamond dogs about, angry diamond dogs, diamond dogs that were perhaps a bit sore about having some of their fellow dogs killed. It was a reasonable fear. As he trotted beside Maud, he realised that something else might be watching them, somepony that had taken a bizarre and disturbing interest in him.

“How far you planning on going, Maud?” Tarnish checked out a copse of trees on the side of the road, giving it a wary eye, and then he checked out other places where something or somepony might take cover.

“I have a campsite in mind.” Maud turned to look at her husband. “It’s past the Sisters. Going to be a long trip though. It’s going to be tiring, but I think I can do it. I want to be away from this whole area.”

“Me too.” Tarnish nodded his head, lifted his canteen, and began to concentrate upon imaginary fluffy clouds, cool, moist, delightful fluffy clouds. He had no idea what clouds felt like, he wasn’t a pegasus, so he had to use his imagination to the fullest extent.

He suffered a momentary distraction when he wondered if he could do a permanency spell upon his canteen. It would be nice if it could conjure up its own water and save him the effort. Scowling, he banished the distraction from his mind and focused upon his task. Water was essential, and if Maud was going to be making a long trip, she was going to need to stay hydrated. That was his job. To keep Maud hydrated and fed while she did the hard, heavy work of pulling the wagon.

Without even realising it, his hooves fell into a steady rhythm as he walked beside Maud, while concentrating and trying to refill the canteen. There was water above him and below him. And something else… something… magic too. He craned his head around, trying to orient himself, and saw the peaks of the Sisters. He felt the magic tugging at him. His mind made a quiet suggestion, trying to fill in the blanks. There’s a reason that the gems and the metal pulled out of the ground from there was so valuable. Feeling the magic, being so in touch with it, so in tune, he thought back to the time when he had surged, when he had channeled the chaotic magic creeping up from the ground, the time just before the volcano blew.

His magic had changed, it was as if he had become uncorked, unstoppered. His magic wasn’t like other ponies, though, and he knew it. In his current heightened state, he became aware, he understood. He realised the reason why he was so in tune with the mysterious stranger’s own magic—it was chaos—it was unpredictable, dangerous, unreliable chaos. And with this understanding, he had a suspicion of what would happen if she turned her magic against his.

Disaster. The end result could only be called disaster. He shivered and heard the sound of water running. He looked down, snapping himself out of his stupour. Water gushed from his canteen and spilled down upon the dirt road as he walked.

If chaos was the unstoppable force, Tarnish understood that he was the immoveable object. The realisation scared him. He stopped conjuring water, took a sip from his canteen, and then jammed the stopper in. He pulled out his tea flask, took a sip for good measure, and then stowed that away.

“You okay?” Maud asked. “You’re giving me a peculiar sensation. Something about you is making my croup feel all weird and tingly.”

“Sorry…” Tarnish shook his head. “I don’t know what came over me. My magic has been different since that day. I’ve been different—”

“We both have,”Maud said, making a rare interruption.

Squinting down his muzzle at the road ahead, Tarnish wasn’t sure how to reply, or how to explain his thoughts. He didn’t know how to convey a feeling. He lacked both the knowledge and the vocabulary to express himself. It worried him.

A meeting that ended with violence between him and the stranger would not be good.

As Tarnish dumped the dehydrated and shredded potatoes into some water so they could soak, Trixie emerged from the wagon. It alarmed him, he stood up right away, and reached out to her with his magic. A glance from Maud stopped him, but he remained vigilant. Trixie took an unsteady step down, testing the fold out stairs, and then wobbling, she made her way down.

“You look better,” Maud said to Trixie.

“Trixie feels better.” Trixie’s words came out as a dry croak, and Tarnish, hearing her need, responded. He had made a pitcher of orange juice from the dehydrated concentrate powder. It wasn’t the best stuff in the world, but it was oddly satisfying and thirst quenching. He poured some into a plastic tumbler and set it down upon a flat rock that was serving as a makeshift table. As he did so, a knot in the fire popped, sending up sparks.

Trixie was limping, trying to keep weight off of her bad leg. As she drew nearer to the fire, Tarnish could see that it wasn’t swollen, not like it was. Her frog appeared to be an almost normal size and the terrible cyst did not seem to be refilling with pus. Trixie’s eye was still swollen shut, he wasn’t sure what he could do about that. He supposed that time was going to have to fix it.

“What’s for dinner?” Trixie asked.

“Hash browns, Tarnish is going to make a creamy pepper gravy from concentrated milk, toast with butter and jam, and we each get a tin of pudding.” Maud’s head turned as her body shifted. She looked at Trixie, the fire reflected in her eyes, and she watched as Trixie sat down beside the fire, easing herself down. There was a faint, weak looking glow around the glass of orange flavoured drink, and Trixie was able to lift the glass.

The entire glass was gone in a few gulps and without needing to be asked, Tarnish refilled it. Both he and Maud kept an eye on Trixie, who appeared to have some trouble sitting up. She was struggling to remain upright. What kept her going? Pride? Willpower? A little bit of both? Her mane was tangled, uncombed, and Tarnish felt bad for her. She had slept for the entire day while Maud had pulled the wagon. As she drank, he could see that a little bit of the drink dribbled down the side of her face—the swelling around her eye was awful and tugged at her lips.

When this glass was empty, Tarnish refilled it again, but Trixie did not take a drink right away. Instead, she set it down upon the makeshift stone table and stared down at her front hooves with her one open eye.

“Trixie thanks you,” she said in a low, wavering voice. “Trixie is incredibly lucky. A not nice pony might have done things to Trixie or taken revenge. A lot of ponies don’t like me. Trixie thinks she was still delirious when she agreed to go to bed with you. She is glad that you were honourable.”

Unsure of how to respond, Tarnish nodded, and then set to work slicing up the bread so that it could be toasted over the fire. He saw Trixie lift her head and look up at him. She looked as though she was about to cry at any moment—her eye was already brimming with tears—and he averted his eyes because it felt strange to watch her cry.

Maud was very much like a stone. She had Boulder out and sat with him balanced upon her hoof. She wasn’t saying anything to Trixie, but she was watching. Tarnish knew there was some history between the two mares, Trixie had worked at the rock farm and wasn’t the best worker. Then, much to Tarnish’s surprise, Maud spoke.

“What happened?” Maud asked.

A low whimper made itself heard in the base of Trixie’s throat and she trembled. She looked at Maud, her eye glistening with tears, which reflected the faint orange glow of the coals in the fire. One foreleg lifted, her bad one, and she folded it over her barrel, as if she was trying to ward off the painful memory plaguing her.

“Trixie thought it was her end,” Trixie replied. “She was sleeping when they took her.”

Tarnish felt cold chills along his spine and he glanced over at Flamingo, who was still in her sheath. She could be pulled out in the same time it took to blink. Tarnish wondered if that would be enough, if a nasty surprise happened.

Shaking her head, Trixie let out a few whimpering words. “Trixie cannot talk about it.” She looked over at Tarnish, blinking away tears as she did so, and she focused her curious, tear filled eye upon him. “How did you heal Trixie?”

“Zebra hoodoo,” Tarnish replied, “it’s a little something I’m trying out as a hobby.”

“A hobby?” Trixie sounded astonished. She held up her foreleg and waved it around. “You healed this using a hobby?”

“Well, I also pulled out a nail and drained a lot of the infection.” Tarnish offered no detail of those misadventures and he wasn’t sure if he could ever be comfortable around toothpaste ever again. He felt queasy just thinking about it. “I made an effigy of you and then I applied an antibiotic tincture with antiseptic properties to the effigy’s leg. It fixed you right up. I’m just as surprised as you are.”

Trixie’s one good eye blinked a few times and a single tear rolled down her cheek. No other tears followed. Her eye glimmered, but the flow of tears seemed staunched for now. “Why would a unicorn stoop to using zebra magic?”

Now feeling annoyed, Tarnish reminded himself that Trixie wasn’t feeling well. He bit back a heated reply, took a moment to pick his words with some care, and made certain that his tone was neutral. “I’m not a very magical unicorn… well, I can be, but overall in general, I’m not. Just like any other unicorn though, I too, would like to master magic.” He saw Trixie’s eye narrow as he spoke.

“Trixie understands the need for power.” There was a long pause. “It was almost her undoing.”

“Oh, look, the potatoes have rehydrated,” Tarnish said, feeling the need to busy himself. He too, had heard the alluring siren song of power calling out to him and hearing Trixie’s words put everything into perspective for some reason. “I’d best get busy fixing dinner. ‘Scuse me.”

Author's Notes:

This trip is quite a bit shorter than the last. Soon, we shall arrive at The Scariest Cave in Equestria.