“Blackbird… there is something I must ask of you.”

Even as Dim spoke, he saw the change come over Blackbird’s face, a faint expression of worry perhaps, or maybe anxiousness. She was holding a piece of toast smeared with butter, sardines, and garlic paste in her left talons. At this moment, in this pose, with the look upon her face, she was perfect. Dim leaned in, captivated in some way that he could not understand, he dared not try to comprehend, and he allowed the crack in his hardened heart to widen just a little bit more, pain be damned.

“This is complicated—”

“That’s the nature of proposals, Dim.”

Such words. They gave him pause. This was, indeed a proposal of sorts, though perhaps not the one she was wanting, or expecting. The one she was anticipating. A quick deep breath did nothing to prepare him, so he tried again, and still again, though he felt no readier for his preparation. When it occurred to him that he was making futile efforts, a deep, shuddering breath wracked his body and almost made him cough.

“Perfect memory has awakened something within me, Blackbird. Having such a clear vision of the past, and all that has happened, I remember in perfect detail how you came for me after I withdrew. That’s the thing. I remember everything.” He paused, uncertain for a time, and then found his tongue after some quick soul-searching. “Seeing the past so clearly has revealed some of the future… of this I am fairly certain.”

With slow caution, Blackbird nipped off a bite of her toast and waited.

“I have always feared that the darkness was evidence of my damnation. But nothing could be further from the truth. The darkness is my salvation. My reward. Dark… is not evil. Blackbird, there is something I must do, and there is something I must ask of you.”

In silence, her face a wizened mess from apprehension, Blackbird chewed her toast.

“I must become the darkness. No more wandering about in confusion, fearing the light but also foolishly believing I need it for my salvation. It is time for me to embrace the darkness and accept that it is not evil. But—”

“Yesh?” Blackbird said around her mouthful of food.

“If I am to embrace the darkness,” he continued, wheezing out each word, “then I ask that you be my stars. The night is merely blindness without some meaningful form of radiance. Something has to define the darkness, lest it be mistaken for absence—”

“Dim, I had no idea that you were a romantic.”

It took Dim a moment to realise that these words did not come from Blackbird. Her lips did not move, nor was it her voice. Distracted, his neck hot and prickly, it took him several painful, embarrassing moments to make sense of the situation. A deep breath did nothing but make his lungs tickle, and he felt what was sure to be a cough rolling over in anticipation of escaping.

“Jolie… I have killed for lesser offenses,” he said at last.

“Yeah, I know,” the little red mare replied while she trotted to the table so that she could sit down. “So it took death to soften your heart a little. I did not expect that.” She clambered up into a chair, grunting with effort, and when she sat down, her head barely peeked over the table’s edge. Her muzzle crinkled when she looked up at what Blackbird was eating, but smiled when she turned her attention upon Dim.

Warm fondness mixed with icy annoyance and Dim wasn’t certain which was the stronger. He maintained his calm, steady, aristocratic manner, at least on the outside. On the inside, however, he was fighting a losing battle against the urge to cough and the constant, steady tickle inside of his lungs sapped his will.

True to form, true to self, Blackbird let go with a thunderous belch that caused Jolie’s mane to go flapping in the fetid, sardine-scented gale released by the braptacular hippogriff. Dim was both disgusted and impressed, and as the gurgly burp continued, he managed to derive some small sense of satisfaction from Jolie Rouge’s uncomfortable squirming.

“Ugh! Carnivores!” Jolie waved her stubby legs around, but to no avail.

When Blackbird wiped her mouth with her foreleg, Dim turned away and looked out the window. The city was blanketed beneath sooty grey clouds, like an infant with a caul or a corpse beneath a shroud. Depending upon the state of one’s optimism or pessimism, the city was either being reborn or now existed in a state of curious undeath, the fascinating fate of some cities as they continued to linger. The sight of it filled him with melancholy, but also an annoying, pokey sliver of hope that very much felt like something sharp lodged in the tender folds of one’s frogs.

Cities existed, even if they shouldn’t, and something had to be done with them.

They were a blight, a cancerous canker upon the land, and the roads were the tendrilous appendages that spread through the body so that new cities, new growths, could be established. Yet, for all their vulgarity, they had a necessity to them; progress meant cities so that civilisation could flourish. Without cities, without civilisation, all of the world would be disgusting primitives—a rotten circumstance indeed.

Try as she might, Jolie Rouge could not wave nor ward away the stink.

Beyond the window, which was greasy and ashen, miracles took place in steady succession. Buildings rose from their fallen, shattered state. Crooked narrow streets were widened, made straight, made better, because the destruction and reconstruction allowed for much needed improvement. These narrow, confined arteries were widened, which would allow for new blood to flow into the city. What Chromium restored had a sense of harmonic order, something that the city had lacked in its previous incarnation.

“What is to be done with Bombay?” Dim asked when his meandering thoughts returned to the present situation.

Blackbird’s face remained playful, but her eyes were sad. Jolie on the other hoof, hid her emotions far better, and when her head turned, Dim had trouble reading her face. She was good at this, Jolie was. He already knew that she was troubled though, so this attempt to conceal herself was meaningless. A steady rain began to fall and left streaks on the sooty, greasy glass. It seemed as though the rain could not improve things, make things better, it could only make a greater mess.

“She’ll be taken to the cultist compound,” Jolie said, almost whispering. “She belongs with the Bard. Perhaps in death they’ll have the peace they did not know in life.” The little red mare sighed and then folded her forelegs over her barrel. “As one great romance ends, another begins. Are you two doing okay? I need to know that you are okay. Gratin is being a moody catbird and nothing… nothing feels right. Nothing feels good. I don’t wanna go home and report on all we’ve lost. I’m taking all of this a lot harder than I’m letting on. My ship is all shot to shit. All my friends and loved ones are grieving. Fancy has fallen. Going home is gonna be awful.”

After a shuddering inhale, she continued, “No closure. Bombay just did a hard exit stage left. I keep wondering if she did it because she knew going home would be hard. Facing the music. She was responsible for keeping the Bard alive. His protector… he was a powerful asset. Going home a failure is hard… but to go home a failure and grieving over what you’ve lost… what you’re to be protecting… and having to answer for that, I can’t imagine what that must feel like.” Squeezing her eyes shut, the foal-sized red mare shook her head from side to side, and her forelock swung to and fro with each turn. “Or maybe I can. As a captain, I am to look after my crew. I’m heading homeward with empty bunks. I have to answer for those… I gotta answer for those.”

Reaching out, Blackbird lifted Jolie from her chair, hefted her like a small, squirming sack of potatoes, and pulled her close. Dim stared at them both, unblinking, he did so until his eyes stung with the need for moisture. When he did finally blink, it was a slow, unwilling act. Far more moisture than was strictly necessary flooded his eyes and with a turn of his head, he faced the window once more.

This… this was why he needed Blackbird to be his stars.

He did not resent Jolie for her interruption. Far from it, actually. Bombay had retreated to give he and Blackbird a moment alone—and that did not end well. He was aware of some sense of change within himself, but at the moment, he had no understanding of how to plumb its profound depths. With perfect memory came something else, an awakening of a sort that he could not comprehend, an attunement with the world that was still too new to understand.

Other changes had been wrought, other understandings, such as the passage of time. He had a keen awareness of it now, how little he had. How precious each moment was. Time flowed like torrents of blood that gushed from sundered flesh, each spurt timed, not to a beating heart, but to a ticking clock. As much as he wanted to be selfish and keep Blackbird to himself, to do so would be a contradiction to the very reason he had feelings for her. She was a magnanimous creature, gregarious, a magnet that drew in needy souls.

Such as his own.

For her to be his beacon, his stars, he would have to share her.

Lost in his silent contemplations, he became distracted when he saw the pink tint in his vision; so involved was he, so wrapped up in this moment was he, that he failed to notice the glorious pink intrusion. This felt good and right, sharing this moment of goodness, of growth, after Cadance had been witness to the very worst he had to offer. He thought of Chromium’s many words and wondered what he’d given up for Cadance, what had been lost. Thinking of everything in terms of loss seemed wrong somehow, felt wrong. What was gained?

This he did not know.

Love had almost been lost to the world, almost as if there was some dedicated effort to eradicate it. First the Bard, lost, and then Cadance. What If was a dangerous game, a game where not-knowing was projected and the very worst was imagined. It was speculation—but of a dangerous variety. Cadance had almost been lost, if one could accept that, and not in a battle at home, as one might expect, but on a battlefield incomprehensible to most.

The War had begun and it had multiple fronts.

“When do we leave?” asked Dim.

Held in Blackbird’s forelegs, Jolie squirmed a bit in clear response to the question before she answered, “As soon as possible. Everything that has happened here has no doubt set off a chain of events and we’ll need to react to them before they go out of control. The Black Hand will no doubt want to take advantage of the chaos here. An army of slavers is no doubt on the wind right now. The vultures are coming to pick the bones. Flying home, we’ll probably have to avoid whole fleets of Black Talon ships.”

This caused Blackbird to sigh.

“We’re in no shape to fight, either. I’m not sure if we’ll even get home. Everything is just sort of cobbled together. The ship is not ship-shape.” Jolie’s eyes closed and she went still against Blackbird. “Why does Gratin have to be such a moody catbird? I really need him right now. But he’s off being moody and sulky and doing whatever it is he does during times like these.”

In spite of it all, this did not feel hopeless—just difficult beyond comprehension.

Dim, in a rare mood, allowed his face to relax into something that was almost a smile. He pulled out his pipe, his smoking kit, and went to work, performing a series of actions with no real thought. Outside, thunder rumbled as a late-autumn-early-winter storm drifted into the city from the west. Perhaps the storm would help to cleanse the city.

A storm would help clean up the physical filth, but the shadows that lurked beneath the city required a wholly different cleansing. Dim understood why Gratin might have pushed Jolie away and upon further reflection of this fact, he concluded that it would be best if they left sooner rather than later. They were vulnerable right now, with raw emotions, and weak of will. He did not think ill of his companions for their weakness, a fact that truly gave him pause.

He had been raised to combat the supernatural and the unseen; they had not.

If anything, it was a reason for him to take up the slack and do more. But what? Somewhat confused, Dim sat there, packing his pipe, uncertain of what to say or feel. These changes that had been wrought. He’d been undone. Remade. Reconstructed. Where there had once been doubt, fear, and uncertainty, he now had resolve and clarity. Well, the beginnings of clarity, anyhow. There was still a lot to put together.

“When we leave,” Dim said to Jolie, offering what reassurance he could, “Gratin will be more attentive. Do not begrudge him his behaviour. He is not himself. None of us are truly ourselves right now, save for Blackbird and I, perhaps.” His eyes met with Blackbird’s and he saw understanding flash within them.

She knew.

Like himself, Blackbird had changed, and profoundly so. She was his counterbalance, the weight of reckoning that righted his scales. As he grew in power, so would she. Hers was the power to hold him accountable, a power she had forcibly seized for herself after wheeling and dealing with incomprehensible powers who were little more than metaphors given substance. Blackbird was, indeed, his stars, and when his night grew darker her stars would shine all the brighter.

Fearing the need to cough, Dim lit his pipe and hoped for sweet relief.

Author's Notes:

A lot of this was written while tripping balls with a high fever. I don't know if it is any good or not, but I'll leave it to the reader to decide.