Dim knew a flying deathtrap when he saw one, and he was looking at one right now. Blackbird’s ship, if it could even be called that, was a cobbled-together flying trash heap of random junk that had been smashed together. He stood on the dock, uncertain if such a ship should even fly, even with magic making such a thing possible. Going aboard would take courage, and he took a long pull on the bottle of rum he had with him.

The ship had started life as a wooden gypsy vardo, with ornate scrollwork and carvings. It was a good sized one by the looks of it, big enough for a family of ponies or just one hippogriff. The wheels and axles had been removed, and now there was a mess of cloth, wood, and rope beneath the ship, a mess for which he could not figure out the purpose. The nacelle above—long, thin, and cigar shaped—was far too small for the ship. From the sides of the vardo itself, there were two propellers that were not attached to any engines, just pulleys and belts. These too, confused him a great deal.

In the front of the craft, there was a place for somepony to be harnessed, in this case, Blackbird, meaning that the hobbled together airship was pulled, not powered. Dim heaved a sigh and when he turned, he found Blackbird looking at him with a proud expression upon her face. It vexed him, that she was so proud of this somehow floating trash heap, but he kept his scornful words to himself.

“I made her myself from scrap and salvage,” Blackbird said as she turned to look at her ship.

“How does it even fly?” Dim asked, uncertain if he could trust his eyes.

“Well, it takes a bit more electricity than usual.” Blackbird pointed with her talons at the propellers on the sides. “When I start to pull it, those props spin and generate electricity. The electricity activates the Celestium gas and it lifts. It becomes super light once I get enough speed. I have a big bank of batteries that I have to keep cranked to maintain the initial lift so she can stay off of the ground.”

The science checked out, at least. Dim scowled, fearing that science had low standards. A word needed to be had with science, with the hopes of straightening it out.

“I rigged up a sail too! It folds out from beneath, so if there is a helpful wind blowing in the direction I am going, I can unfurl the sail and just ride the air currents.” Blackbird was smiling and her green eyes glittered with glee. “I didn’t quite get a polytechnic education, but I grew up practical!”

“Indeed.” Dim wasn’t sure what he was more annoyed by; the fact that this ship flew or Blackbird’s grating enthusiasm. He guzzled down more alcohol to steel his nerves, but no matter how much he drank, he could not quell or quench his terror. Of all of the things he had done, of all the dangers he had faced, of all of the situations, this was the worst.

He was going to die if he stepped aboard, of this he was certain.

“Blackbird… just the little bird I was looking for!” the voice was booming, and held a disturbing happiness, a faux-happiness. “I’ve come to collect what is owed, Blackbird.”

While Dim was turning about, Blackbird had this to say: “I don’t owe you anything, so get lost, Grenadine.” Behind him was one of the largest minotaurs that he had ever seen, a big, somewhat reddish creature. Muscles bulged beneath his ruddy, rusty hide, and there was an enormous hand cannon protruding from a holster.

“Look, I paid you for a lead, and you gave me nothing. So I took my money back.”

“That’s not how it works, Little Bird.” The massive minotaur hooked his thumbs into his belt and smiled down at Blackbird. “No one takes money from me. Ever.”

“So you’re saying I was the first? That I popped your cherry? Now I feel accomplished.”

The minotaur’s broad grin vanished, and Dim felt his muscles tense.

“You pull that hand cannon,” Dim said in a low voice, “and I will boil you in your own semen.”

The minotaur raised one enormous, ruddy, calloused hand. “I have no fight with you. Whatever she is paying you, I can double it. How much is she paying you, anyhow?”

Dim did not know this minotaur, and hadn’t ever seen him before. Perhaps he came from another nearby island. He did, however, know one thing. He didn’t like the bovine creature, not at all. He suspected that his reputation wasn’t going to help him here, and he wasn’t sure if this conflict could be resolved in a peaceful manner.

“So far, she hasn’t paid me a single coin.” Dim’s words were soft, almost hissy.

“Good.” The minotaur nodded. “Walk away, before you get hurt, so I can take what I’m owed out of Little Bird’s ass… one good cherry pop deserves another.”

“There is a shortage of fine, perfect asses in the world,” Dim began, and he pushed his hat back from his face, revealing his goggled eyes.. “The idea of you defiling one with your disgusting tube steak sickens me.”

“I have a perfect ass?” Distracted, Blackbird tucked her head around, trying to have a better look.

The minotaur too, was distracted, and he opened his mouth to say something, but the words never came forth. Without warning, Grenadine was suddenly on fire, his flesh melting like wax and his fat rendering into combustible oils that dribbled down, further fueling the flames. Bystanders began screaming, so too did Blackbird, who lept away with a flap of her wings.

For Dim, this was a mostly-normal Tuesday.

“You set him on fire!” Blackbird screamed out in alarm; she seemed quite surprised by this turn of events.

“A very astute observation.” Dim took a few steps backwards, away from the flailing, flaming bull-creature. There was a loud bang, which made all of his muscles pull taut, and it only took a second to realise that the hand cannon had gone off. The minotaur pitched over, his leg almost shot clean off, and he fell into the filthy, sewage-filled water of the harbour. “I hope you haven’t eaten recently,” Dim remarked. “To suddenly have cramps while swimming would be a cruel fate indeed.”

Now, the ocean was on fire, lurid blue-green flames danced along the water’s surface, and Dim clucked his tongue, having not anticipated this outcome. The entire city of Tortoise-Tuga might burn down because of one careless fire that set the ocean ablaze. Concerned for his own safety, he turned to look at Blackbird, who was now standing in open-mouthed shock.

“We should be going, before your ship catches on fire.”

Blackbird had large, powerful wings by any creature’s standard, and her wingspan was about three pegasus ponies’ wingspans wide… on each wing. With each flap, the ship picked up speed while gaining buoyancy. Behind her, the harbour of Tortoise-Tuga was burning, and the fire had spread out into a vast area of the ocean.

Dim wasn’t sad to see it go. The gypsy vardo, now an airship, leveled out a bit in flight, and he took stock of his surroundings. Inside of the wagon, there was only one ‘room.’ There were fold-down bunks against the wall, two of them, and he guessed that Blackbird had created the second bunk for when she found her mother. There was a front window, offering a magnificent view of Blackbird’s muscular backside, and the rear window was a compact, round picture frame around the spectacular sight of Tortoise-Tuga burning.

It was difficult to figure out what he wanted to look at.

The shakes settled in, dreadful tremours, and Dim had to brace his hooves against the floor to keep from falling over. He could feel the side of his face convulsing, and the spasming muscles tugged his ear, pulling it down, while also causing the corner of his eye to contort. Murmuring, he tried to reassure himself that one more life—a few more lives—didn’t matter. He was still alive, he had survived Tortoise-Tuga.

The world had gone greyer for him, everything he had once known, everything he believed in, it was passing away, falling away from him, fleeing from his reach. In the past few months, whatever bits of black and white that had once remained were now blurred beyond all recognition. There was only one good: survival, and only one evil: weakness. He was purging his weaknesses, his addictions, each one of his failings had been examined with a critical eye, and then he had done his best to cut them away, to excise them.

“That magnificent cock of yours is still a weakness,” Darling Dark’s voice whispered, causing his ear to twitch in syncopation against his facial tics. Her mocking laughter filled the inside of his head, echoing against the inside of his skull, and he squeezed his eyes shut, wondering if the pink voice might save him.

Alas, for now, the pink voice was silent.

He pulled his goggles off and what little daylight shone inside of the vardo pierced his eyes like needles. The sudden pain cleared his head while also making his swimmy-headedness even worse. Blinking, he tried to force his eyes to remain open, to let the light in, and the agony pushed the mocking laughter of his dead half-sister out of his mind.

Sweating, he reached out with his telekinesis, pulled down the lower bunk, shed his gear, his saddlebags, and fell into it, not noticing the many black hairs and bits of black feathers. Gasping, he struggled to breathe, and his many addictions came back in force. One little moment of conflict had almost undone him. His tongue shriveled, longing for coca-laced salts or opium-laced salts, he could not tell. All over, his skin stung as his pores yawned to spill out salty sweat.

Shivering in bed, he pulled his bottle of rum to him, clutching it like an infant in his forelegs, and then he began to gibber when he allowed his eyes to close. Darling’s laughter was gone, but now, something far worse had replaced it; his mother’s humming. His ears pivoted and perked when he heard Desire’s lullabyes, and his fevered brain recalled her sweet songs. How beautiful she had sang to him while holding him close.

“Mother, I am sorry…” His words trailed off while his teeth began to chatter together. Moments before, he had been burning up, but the profuse sweating had left him chilled. His head did not rest upon a pillow, but against the thin mattress, and he rubbed his cheek against the rough blanket.

After a few more whimpers, he went still.

The blessed cool of night filled the vardo, and when Dim opened his eyes, he found Blackbird staring at him with her strange, slitted green eyes. Feline eyes. For a moment, while he struggled to wake, he wondered what being a mouse felt like. There was a dreadful, dull ache in his guts, his skin itched as though there were bugs crawling beneath it, and there was a ringing sound in his ears.

“Are you sick?” Blackbird asked.

“I am withdrawing,” Dim replied, deciding to be honest and straightforward.

“Oh.” Blackbird’s word was breathed out in a soft huff and her eyes filled with concern. “My dad, he told me stories about how he helped my mother dry out. It was a very difficult time for her.” She paused for a moment, her eyes lingering on Dim, and when she spoke again, it was a muted whisper. “I’d imagine that it is quite difficult. I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

Dim did not reply, not with words, but he did respond, flinching from the display of kindness, and his whole body jerked. An awful taste was in his mouth, something coppery, and with the painful throbbing that filled his head, he suspected that he had been grinding his teeth in his sleep.

“You set Grenadine on fire,” Blackbird said while shaking her head. “I don’t know how I feel about that. I mean, I need a rough and ready sort to help me, because I keep running into creatures like Grenadine, but you… you… you just set him on fire. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“I don’t know,” Dim replied, still being truthful. “I am more bothered by the adrenaline jitters after the fight, I think. He threatened my interests, and he had to be dealt with. An example had to be made.”

“Well, thank you for saving me, I suppose, but I’d really appreciate it if you kept the firestarting to a minimum.” Blackbird blinked, her almost luminous green eyes vanishing for a moment behind her eyelids, and her talon-fingers twitched. “I think I’m going to have nightmares about what I saw. I’ve never seen anypony die like that before. Right now, I can’t even deal with it, and I think I’m in shock.”

“Your father helped your mother?” Dim asked, changing the subject.

Blackbird laughed, a nervous sound. “He did.” She nodded. “My mother captured him and was going to eat him. She wasn’t very nice back in those days. Being what she was, she played with her food a bit, because, really, who can help from doing that, and my father used his magic on her—”

“Magic?” Dim’s eyes narrowed, as magic of any sort got his attention.

“The Scold.” Blackbird grinned, reminiscing, and her eyes were merry. “Some kind of earth pony juju. I ended up with a touch of it myself.” Reaching out, she brushed Dim’s mane away from his face, revealing his mismatched eyes. “He damn near scolded her feathers off, the way my mother tells it, and then proceeds to lecture her almost to death. My mother did the only thing she could do in that situation.”

“And what was that?” Dim found himself wanting to know.

“Why, she fell in love with him.” Blackbird laughed, a strange avian-feline-equine sound.

“How… odd.”

“You’re telling me.” Blackbird pulled her talons away from Dim’s face, and she began to scratch her neck. “My mother was the meanest, most vile, most rootinest, most tootinest gunslinger that ever picked up a revolver. She left a trail of bodies in her wake everywhere she went. Most would think of her as an irredeemable creature, but not my father, Stinkberry.”

Dim said nothing.

“After he scolds her into submission, he starts trying to get her better. She dries out and becomes a lot less mean. After a bit, she and my dad become friends, and then more than friends, and the other earth ponies started to trust her too.” Blackbird’s face became wistful and sad, but still also happy somehow. “She became the protector… she went from being a raider and a bandit to being a protector. It took a while, but she had acceptance, a tough thing for a hippogriff to have. Griffons don’t want you and neither do ponies. But my father scolded anypony that had something mean to say.”

“I am guessing that something happened.”

“Yeah.” Blackbird nodded. “It did.” She shifted the bulk of her weight, which caused the flying vardo to lurch a bit. “A couple years back, my father, he’s off doing his deliveries… he delivered milk and cheeses for the farmer that he worked for. He’s off on his route, and he’s robbed by bandits. Not just any bandits, either, but the really bad kind. The kind that my mother used to be.”

Hearing this, Dim understood, or at least he thought he did.

“When the constables found my father’s body, there wasn’t much left. His wagon had been used for firewood.” Blackbird sniffled a bit, but did an admirable job of holding herself together. “After getting the news, my mother, she starts drinking again, a lot. She pulls her guns out from their hiding place behind the loose stone on the mantel, and she tells me that she’s going hunting. Nothing else, no other words, no goodbyes, no nothing. She’s just going hunting.”

Closing his eyes, Dim let out a sigh.

“I waited, for almost a year, living with the farmer that my father worked for. I worked for him too. I kept myself busy, waiting for my mom to come home, and I tried to deal with my grief, because my father, he got real upset if I started acting sad. After a year, I decided to go looking for my mother, Starling, so I started to prepare and I set off one day to find her. So… here I am.”

A meaningful silence settled in, and when Dim opened up his eyes once more, he found that Blackbird was staring at him in a most peculiar way. He was thirsty, he realised, and was in need of something to drink. A cool breeze wafted along his ribs, making his sides quiver, and he wondered how long he had been sleeping.

“You know, you’re starting to look good enough to eat,” Blackbird remarked while she reached out and tweaked Dim’s snoot with her talon. “I’d better get busy and fix us something to eat.”

For the first time, Dim had a sincere interest in knowing a fellow creature, and he found himself wanting to know more. He didn’t ask, he didn’t pry, but figured that more of her story would happen in time. She was beautiful, in an exotic sort of way, even if she was big enough to be intimidating. She was as large as a lioness and then some. For whatever reason, he was not the least bit bothered that she had just made a joke about eating him, but the thought did linger in his mind.

While turning herself around in the cramped space of the vardo, Blackbird gave Dim a teasing warning. “Oh, and if I think you are staring at my kitty slitty while I am cooking, I’m gonna claw out your eyes, Mister I-Set-Stuff-On-Fire. See if I don’t.”

Author's Notes:

Here we go again... please, leave a comment below, if you don’t mind. I’d like to have an idea of who is reading... and why. Thank you.