Was he dreaming? Had he been dreaming? Disoriented, Dim had trouble discerning what was real and what wasn’t. His nostrils were flooded with the sharp tang of ink, and his eyes watered from it. He was in a bed, a warm, soft bed, one of the nicest beds he had slept in for a long, long time. How long had it been since he had been this comfortable? He didn’t know. There wasn’t an answer. In this confusing moment of being trapped between slumber and waking, this disturbed him a great deal, and he came to full awareness like a swimmer abandoning the depths to come up for air.

He gasped.

Ink. He had been dreaming of ink again. The paper pony. A warning that he couldn’t remember. A warning? He coughed, a hard hacking cough, and his mouth filled with lung butter. Dizzy, he rose out of bed, stumbled over the floor a bit, remembered to put on his goggles, shuffled over to the window, opened it, stuck his head out, and spat.

‘Twas only good fortune that nopony was below.

It was still dark out, but not for much longer. Dim coughed again, hawked up some rubbery, slimy chunks from the depth of his lungs, and spat out the window once more. Stars swam in his vision and blood sang in his ears. Since it was still good and dark out, he took off his goggles and looked out the small round window.

He was a perfectly normal pony now, at this moment, sticking his head out of a window. This was, perhaps, the most normal thing he had ever done in his life. Ponies made windows just so they could stick their heads out of them. Mismatched eyes darting from side to side, he had himself a good look around, and his desynchronised eyeblinks were now visible without his goggles, but there was nopony to see them.

Dim decided that he did not like windows. Sure, he could look out, but things could look in. Ponies liked looking into windows just as much as they liked looking out of them. Pulling his head in, he yanked the window shut. Never mind the fact that he was over fifty feet up in the air, there were pegasus ponies and unicorns that could walk up walls. He was inside of a tree, which in and of itself was rather amazing. The room had been shaped from the living wood and so had the beds. Both of them. Blackbird was still fast asleep in one of them. She was a bit too long of body to fit into the bed, but as supple as she was, it didn’t matter. She had curled into a tight coil and only took up half of the bed.

Dim suffered another normal pony moment while he stared at Blackbird’s sleeping form. She looked sweet, innocent, and her body rose and fell with each breath she took. Thoughts of Darling flooded his mind and with each new memory that surfaced, his breathing grew shallower as his throat drew tighter. With Darling, even when things seemed complicated, everything was easy. She was his toy, his plaything. How many times had he woken her up from her sleep by slipping himself inside of her? She had no means to resist him, no power to make him stop, no agency to say no.

With Blackbird, he had no idea how to reach her. How to connect. She was not beholden to him in any way, shape, or form. When Dim begin to think, when he began to compare the two of them, he began to understand, and even worse, he felt ashamed. Other thoughts grew like unwanted weeds in the garden of his mind, taking over the fertile beds of his memory. There had been no effort, no work, there had been no real challenge in his relationship with Darling. No struggle. Her entire existence, her purpose, her reason for living was to satisfy him. Even her cutie mark reflected that.

Had his mother, Dark Desire, somehow affected Darling Dark’s destiny as well? Had her cutie mark been forced somehow to make her complacent? Compliant? Could a cutie mark be implanted and free will swept away? Even though it was warm in the small room, Dim shivered, and the cold sweat that overcame him made his coat glisten with perspiration.

The void lurked, a fantastic, terrific predator, the very same void that Dim had seen himself looking out of. His emptiness haunted him, his ennui clung to him like a foul plague-bearing miasma, and he thought back to the first time in his life that he felt like he had some sort of meaningful existence; leaving home, stumbling around Canterlot, completely and totally blind. The struggle had been thrilling as much as it was terrifying.

And it had been terrifying.

All of that blind fumbling had meaning, and Dim had done more living in those horrifying, wretched, agonising moments than he had done in any of his years leading up to that point. He had left home, fled the country, and then he had to make a living for himself. Arriving in the Grittish Isles, trying to make a name for himself, trying to establish himself—all of that was so fraught with meaning, so pregnant with purpose, and looking back on it, it had been quite satisfying.

Every bit of the rare, strange, weird, and even esoteric knowledge from his homeschooling had been put to good use. The questionable magic taught to him by his family had practical applications in the real world. His schooling had been extensive and every dark, forbidden, or questionable subject had been pounded into his brain from an early age. He knew things that other wizards didn’t, and it gave him the upper hoof.

But none of this helped him with Blackbird, who mystified him. He had no clue how to even begin. It was… starting over. Starting his adventure over from the beginning, when he was blind, helpless, and had no clue how the world worked. She was worth the effort of discovery. All of these realisations came at a cost though, and with each thought, each memory of how things were, with each hope of how things could be, Dim felt himself sinking back into the mire.

It was too much, too overwhelming, and once more, he found himself back at the beginning, blinded, afraid, in a panic, and in need of help. Dim’s maturity crumbled as his seventeen years of life had not prepared him for this, and he was a foal once more, lost and in need of guidance.

When the conclusion came that he had nopony to turn to, it was far too much for Dim to bear.

Early mornings just before the dawn were excellent times for strix attacks, as they liked to catch the unwary just starting their day. Though he was distracted, Dim was not unwary. He stood smoking on the balcony, staring off in the direction of the lake. More had been done with planning and preparation than actual combat. The harpoons and barrels had to be made fireproof. He had cast repair spells on the barrels, which had caused the individual wooden planks to join together, thus making them stronger. Hours of preparation, mere minutes of combat.

It had gone off without a hitch.

He had never been in any real danger from the creature, only from his own mistakes or failure. Puffing away, he contemplated his existence, his thoughts of Blackbird, and his many epiphanies he had experienced since awakening not but a half-an-hour ago. The cool of the morning would not last long and he expected for it to be another hot day.

Hearing hooves, he cocked his head off to one side and saw a unicorn approaching. He sort of recognised this mare, having seen her a few times, and she approached him with cautious apprehension. She looked scared, but also kind of excited, yet still somehow half-awake. One thing she wasn’t doing was keeping an eye out for strix. Dim scowled.

“I saw you out my window,” the mare said as she drew closer.

Hard work and drudgery had not been kind to her. She was young, but hard living had aged her. Wrinkles graced the corners of her eyes, one ear was notched and had a hole through it, and her hooves were in a condition that would cause any proper-bred noble to feel faint. His eyes lingered on the hole in her ear, and the notch. He’d seen those before, and he wondered if she had removed her own tag or if some kind soul had helped her. The better question was, how was she freed? Had she saved herself? Some rescuer? Some knight errant?

Something had to be wrong with him, because something about this disgusting primitive evoked his sense of pity. Remembering his manners, he turned away and stopped staring. No doubt, she was self-conscious about the hole in her ear, the enduring mark of shame of being a slave. Dim had one too, but his was inside where it couldn’t be seen.

“My name is Fancy Chancy,” she said, her voice timid and quavering.

Taking a deep toke, Dim did not reply, but he did nod.

“Would you like to come and lay with me for a while?”

Dim did not allow himself to react but kept himself stony faced.

“You’re new and different and that’s kinda exciting—”

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Dim asked, and his voice was devoid of emotion.

Fancy Chancy stood there, stammering for a time, unable to form words. Taking a deep breath, she tried again, and was not successful. On the third attempt, she managed to say, “Don’t judge me. It’s what I know. It’s about all I know. I got comfortable with it.”

The silver stem of his cigarette holder that hung from the corner of his mouth bobbed up and down while he turned his head once more to look at the pale green mare. “I too, got comfortable with it,” he muttered, and his words made the mare’s ears perk. The sound of her sniffles made his pointed ears perk, and in the faint available light, he saw tears welling up in her eyes.

“Save it,” he said, his voice flat, feelingless, a deadpan. “Save it for somepony worthy.”

“But I… but no… but you don’t understand—”

One of Dim’s eyebrows lifted while the other bore downwards.

“—after what I’ve been though, nopony will find me worthy.”

Sighing, Dim sent out a cloud of blue smoke that shrouded his face. The words—her words—stung, but the place where the hurt had landed he could not fathom, could not comprehend, there was no one place on his body where he could point to and say that he felt pain. Once again, he thought of Darling, and felt the metaphorical flagellation crack upon his metaphorical back. He winced, drawing real pain from abstract concepts.

“There is no saving it,” Fancy Chancy said, almost whimpering. “It’s already gone.”

“I know.” The words came out as clove and cannabis scented smoke. “But it was taken from you. Stolen. You have your freedom now. I don’t know where I am going with this.” A third, invisible entity manifested, and it was Awkwardness. Dim had a keen awareness of its presence, and he cringed.

Confused, the young mare stood there, sniffle-snorting, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “At first, I hated it, it hurt, it hurt me, and for a time, I thought they would rip me in half. There was always that terror. But then, one day, everything changed…” Her voice trailed off and she shuffled a little closer to Dim.

“And what happened?” Dim asked, even though he didn’t want to.

The reply was a shame-filled whisper. “I started enjoying it.”

Dim’s teeth made a dreadful click against the silver end piece of his cigarette holder as he attempted to keep it in place and to prevent it from falling from his mouth. This hurt—surprisingly so—his teeth chipped again and somehow, even with the electric jolts of pain shooting through his head, he managed to catch the falling silver tube with his magic. Little jagged fragments—tooth chips—threatened to slice his tongue as they settled into the soft, vulnerable, fleshy places beneath where his saliva squirted from. Leaning over the rail, he began to spit and sputter, trying to rid his mouth of the chipped bits of enamel.

“The stallions here, they won’t be rough with me. They won’t hurt me. They won’t bite me or kick me.” Fancy Chancy’s voice somehow sounded aroused and haunted at the same time. “And now that I’ve slept around a little, most of them won’t have anything to do with me. I have a powerful need now.”

It seemed that Dim was doomed to think about Darling, and even worse, he thought of his mother, and how she had said that Darling had suffered a confusing orgasm. He too, had suffered a confusing orgasm, and the damage it seemed, was permanent. His sexuality had gone in every single direction it could that day, leaving him with lusts that nopony should have.

“I am not a motherfucker,” Dim murmured to himself.

“I watched my mother get fucked,” Fancy Chancy said while she stared down at her hooves. “After that, she was paid for and taken away to some place called Menagerie. I was seven.”

Unable to respond, Dim plucked his cigarette holder from his lips and passed it to the mare beside him. She accepted, and for a moment, their magic intermingled. Her magic was little more than a spark, a flickering flame on a candle. Certainly not enough to defend herself. She took a puff, coughed, spluttered, and then tried again. Almost right away, her eyes became sleepy looking, and a sad, heartbroken smile could be seen upon her face.

“I wasn’t beautiful enough to be sent to Menagerie. I was sold to a group of miners.”

“Okay, since we seem to be having this horrible conversation no matter what, I have to ask, how did you get free? Let’s skip past the bad parts and get to the good parts if we have to keep discussing this, okay?” Frowning, Dim yanked his cigarette holder out of her mouth and inserted it back between his own lips so he could puff away on what little was left.

“Four ponies came along,” Fancy Chancy began, and she seemed almost eager for the telling. Her expression was now sleepy, calm even, and she shuffled on her hooves. “Two unicorns and two pegasus ponies. One of the unicorns was chocolate brown, big fella, and the other was little and I think she was an albino. One of the pegasus ponies had a rainbow mane.” She paused for a moment to smile, and something in her eyes changed, though how, Dim could not say.

“There was a huge fight and I thought for certain that these four ponies were going to end up as new slaves, but all kinds of bad things happened and there was a flying talking sword and the big brown one, he kept smashing ponies with his shield, and the albino… she was scary. She had a lot of magic. When the fighting was done, we were freed, and they diverted the river and flooded the mine, and that made it collapse. I don’t know why they did that, but they did. We were digging for something, but the forepony never said for what. We just had to keep digging down.”

“Alright then. I expect something in return for my sympathetic ear. Tea and breakfast would be good.” Dim saw the faint pink light on the horizon, and a sense of eager anticipation overtook him. He wanted to watch the lake monster fry. “Do you have eggs? I would really like eggs.”

Confused, Fancy Chancy stood blinking. “We… we have duck eggs—”

“Well then, scrambled duck eggs is what I will be having. I’ll have toast too.”

“But I… but we… but you… you and I—”

“Something sweet would be great. Something sour sweet would be better. Now go!”

Blinking in confusion, her tail swishing from side to side, the young mare ran off to do Dim’s bidding.

Author's Notes:

This chapter was difficult to write. I’m feeling squicked out, stressed out, and kinda icky.