The moon rose, and with the ascendence of the moon into the heavens overhead, some of Dim’s strength returned. He hadn’t died, Blackbird had assured him that she had felt a faint pulse in his neck when she had poured in the antidote, but his memories about the event were jumbled enough to be useless. The aftereffects were unbearable, he was still having seizing pains in his heart, and in the back of his mind, he wondered, he worried, how much permanent damage had he done to himself?

Piercing the veil was a dangerous hobby, and Dim resigned himself to never doing it again. He wanted to live, at least, at this moment. He sat in a shallow stream of almost warm water, smoking, and Blackbird was showing him extraordinary kindness by scrubbing him. Somehow, she had even scrubbed and wiped away the gritty crust around his eyes without even scratching him with her claws. She was a marvellous creature, now made all the more beautiful by a cloak of moonlight.

His holder was plucked from his lips, Blackbird took a toke, and then returned it to its rightful place. Under most circumstances, Dim would never allow this, but Blackbird had proved herself as his companion. He didn’t mind in the slightest. There were a lot of things about Blackbird that he didn’t mind. Tilting his head back, he looked up at the stars.

They might have been his stars, had the circumstances been different. This might have been his night. The moon might’ve been his moon. But these were passing thoughts, and he was grateful that they remained with their rightful owner, the Night Lady. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering about what might have been. He knew the story, he knew the whole convoluted tale about how Twilight Sparkle had cut down Nightmare Moon and in doing so, freed Luna from the demon shadow that had claimed her. The prophecy had proven true: the stars had aided in Luna’s escape. She was set free and made whole by one of her own bloodline, Twilight Sparkle.

Had Twilight failed though… Dim gave this serious thought. He too, was one of Luna’s stars, and it would have fallen on him to free her, to aid in her escape. Death was an escape of sorts, and Luna would have been freed from the clutches of her cruel, unyielding tormentor. Dim was gifted at aiding others in their escapes. Escape from what though? Destiny? Destiny did not guarantee the outcome—Dim now had proof of that trapped in a mirror—it only suggested an outcome. The world was a better place for Twilight’s success and Luna’s restoration. All of the pieces had fallen into place and a great success had been had. It all worked out for everypony and everything that lived on this planet—except for Dim, the successor whose great destiny had not been realised. No backup was needed. Puffing, he sighed and blew smoke out his nose. The clove smoke numbed his sinuses and eased the pain just behind and below his eyes.

“Blackbird—”

“Yeah?” She cut in before Dim could finish what he was saying.

“—it is good that I can trust you. You saved me earlier. Thank you. I was far too engrossed in my work to think of saving myself. I mean, I suppose you had your reasons, like saving your mother, but all the same, I thank you.”

“My mother was the last thing on my mind at that moment,” Blackbird confessed and her scrubbing ceased. “I believe my exact thoughts were, ‘Oh fuck me sideways, my friend is dead.’ Or something like that. I panicked. But yeah, I’d admit, I did think about my mother a couple of times during everything that happened.” Once more, she swiped Dim’s cigarette holder, took a few deep tokes, and then stabbed it back between his lips.

“Blackbird, I intend to make my own destiny. I am going to carve a bloody swath across the countryside, collect the scalps of bandits, and remind everything why Equestrian nobles should be feared. I don’t know what my destiny is, or what it is meant to be, but I know what I’d like for it to be.”

“You know, Dim, I know nothing about you, but you know an awful lot about me. I mean, I know you’re a noble, and you set things on fire, but that’s about it.” There was a splash when she sat down in the water and the rocks she sat on clunked together while she settled in, scooting her backside around to form a seat in the stream bed.

Blackbird’s body was warm, but her pelt was cool and wet. Dim shivered from the contrast and his muscles bunched up as he felt a spark of never before experienced desire. This was different from his experiences with Darling. This was new, and Dim got off on new things. Blackbird was new. She wasn’t a pony, she wasn’t a griffon. As far as creatures went, she was unique. This inflamed Dim, and left him filled with want.

When Dim blinked, the world took on a pink tint to everything. The moon, the stars, the faint light, all of it was tinted pink. Something inside of his brain popped in a pleasant way, like a pimple bursting and the sudden relief one felt when the pressure subsided. Blackbird was captivating, bewitching… his arousal grew and with it, the need for violence. Entire kingdoms would burn, if necessary, so she could reach her mother.

Another blink and the pink hue vanished: with it went some of the pressing urge for violence. Entire kingdoms might be somewhat charred and might smoulder, if necessary, but Blackbird would find her mother. Dim was aware that magic was being cast within his mind, but he did not care. These pink flashes he saw were evidence of remote spellcasting, and he didn’t care. The pink alicorn… what was her name? He felt as though he should know it, but it was somehow blocked from him. He decided that the pink pony princess wasn’t the target of his ire or mistrust, no, he had a goat to worry about.

Strong claws grabbed him, which made him panic for a moment, and then he was laid on his back in the water. It flowed into his ears, tickled his sides, and he felt the prickle of talons on his belly. It seemed that Blackbird had plans to scrub something else, and Dim just wasn’t in the mood to stop her. The idea of her flesh-rending claws touching him in his most vital, most delicate places was titillating for some reason, and he longed to explore this new sensation.

“I did not have a normal upbringing,” Dim began, and his cigarette holder bobbed in the corner of his mouth while his mane was plastered against his neck by the water. He relaxed and allowed his hind legs to fall open, which left his scrotum to float free, tugged at by the flowing, eddying water. With his head propped up on a few rocks, he was almost comfortable.

The pink tint returned to his vision, along with a strange relaxed sensation. Soap suds were being rubbed into his stomach and Blackbird worked with a light touch. “I grew up in Equestria, but only in a technical sense. I existed in isolation, secluded away in a burrow made of pocket dimensions. I was raised as a prince, because I was The Ideal Dark. I was given a magical education that few can even begin to conceive of. I was born into a life of privilege, wealth, and luxury that few mortals can comprehend. I had it all. I had everything. I was also a slave…” His words faded out and he hesitated, not knowing if he should continue.

“Let it out, Dim, if it makes you feel better.”

Making a split-second decision, Dim decided that he would, indeed, feel better. “I think to best sum up my lifestyle and it’s wicked ways, I should tell you that I was given another pony as a pet… her name was Darling Dark, she was my possession, my playmate, my companion… she was mine to do with as I pleased, and nothing was verboten. Nothing at all… before I left home, I found out that she was my sister…” Sighing, his vision now glowing with pink light that almost burned his eyes, Dim made ready to tell Blackbird everything.

Blackbird was silent and this worried Dim. He lay in the water, exhausted, having poured out every detail he could think of. His soul had been bared, and while he spoke, as he delved ever deeper into the issues that plagued his psyche, the pink tinge to his vision had intensified. It kept doing so, right up to the point where he had fallen silent and could no longer say anything. Now, during the silence that followed, the pink hue had vanished.

“Dim,” Blackbird murmured, and then there was a long pause while she sat beside him, looking thoughtful. “Dim, I’m so sorry.”

This was not what Dim had expected to hear. Relief flowed through him while the water flowed around him. His mane was tugged by the current and saturated tendrils slapped against his neck. Water flowed along his sides and cascaded over the inside of his thighs. Cool, clean water flowed into his sheath, bringing relief to the salt-galded flesh within.

“All that sex against your will, it’s awful—”

“What?” Dim shook his head. “No, no, I very much wanted it, that was the problem—”

“Dim”—Blackbird reached out with her talons and pinched his lips shut, preventing him from saying anything else—“Dim, I’m gonna be real blunt, because I grew up on a farm and I’m no good at this soft, helpful shit. You spent your entire life being raped. No foal should ever have been put into that situation… both you and Darling. Your mother, she did that to bring out the worst in you. That was rape. You were too young to even begin to understand what was going on, and the act of rape happened so many times that now, right now, this minute, you can’t even see it for what it is. You’re like a dairy cow that has been milked its whole life… you just walk right up to the barn and let it happen every day, and just like the dairy cow, it is a normal part of life for you. You can’t imagine a life without being milked. Do you know what happens to a dairy cow if you stop milking them?”

Unable to reply—his lips were still pinched together—Dim made no effort to respond. He lay there in utter disbelief, half not-listening to Blackbird, refusing to believe that any of this was true. This just couldn’t be true.

“When a dairy cow doesn’t get milked, they go crazy and they suffer. We dairy farmers, we’ve messed with those poor cows and screwed up their nature. It ain’t right or natural for them to give milk day after day, but we’ve trained them to be that way. They resist at first, but we train them up from the time they are young, and we make them obedient to what we want because we want milk from them. Sorry Dim, but this is the only way I can understand this and put everything into words.” Black let go of Dim’s lips and pulled her talons away. “I grew up milking cows, among everything else I did.”

“It’s not true.” Dim’s voice was far more whiny than he would have liked, and this pain in his barrel, it had to be from the foxglove poison he had drank earlier. He stared up at the stars, unable to look at Blackbird, and tried to think of a logical argument to disprove everything that she had said. When logic failed him, Dim went with something tried and true: outright denial. “What you said isn’t true. I am not the victim of… that. Darling might be considered the victim of that, but I was the aggressor.”

“You were forced into the position of being the aggressor,” Blackbird said back to Dim, and her words were soft as silk bed sheets sliding together. “You had no choice in the matter, and you were made to perform for your mother. Forced sex is forced sex—”

“IT’S NOT TRUE!” Dim’s voice echoed through the trees and in the distance, a startled owl hooted. Heat rose from Dim’s body and the water splashing against his horn had little curls of steam that rose from it. He started to say something, something angry and mean, something about the ignorance of little farm fillies, but the words felt hollow, petty, and even before he said them, he knew he would regret them. They remained a bitter lump in his throat, a painful protrusion that could not be swallowed.

When Blackbird began to stroke one of his ears, Dim almost lost his temper and his first reaction was to set her on fire. But he withheld his temper, he held back his flames, and the smouldering fires of resentment burned within him. He forced himself to think about what she had just done for him, how she had washed him, how gentle and attentive she had been. In doing this, he felt ashamed, and knew he was right to feel this way.

The resentment died, but the smouldering flames lingered on.

“Dim, I grew up hearing all kinds of justifications and excuses for rape.” Blackbird, squirming in the water, looked up at the stars as well. “Colts will be colts. Little so and so got too excited and just couldn’t help themselves. Oh, she was asking for it, what was she thinking going off into the woods to play with those colts? Oh, if she didn’t want that to happen, she shouldn’t have been acting so damn flirty. She deserved it. I’ve heard it from the other side, too, where excuses were made for the rapists. Every single word I said can be twisted around to turn the attacker into the victim. It was my fault, I got him too excited, and I shouldn’t have done that.”

For a moment, it felt as though Dim was going to strangle from the constriction that grew tighter around his throat and he thought of Fancy Chancy.

“Farmers, Dim. They’re kinda casual about this sorta thing.” Blackbird sighed, shook her head, and then looked down at Dim while the breeze tousled her mane. “They force livestock to breed and there ain’t a lick of difference between livestock and mares, for most of them. My father, he had some funny ideas about the whole thing, and he got laughed at for what he believed in. I suppose he was more enlightened than the rest of the hicks around him. Of course, he did manage to lure a creature twice his size into bed with him, a creature that was all claws and had a razor sharp beak I might add, and with nice words and a bit of affection, he and my mother made me. My father, he was fond of boasting over how I was made with love.”

Dim stared upwards, past Blackbird’s face, which was looking down at him.

“I figured that he boasted because it meant that his way of life was better and more superiour than the others. It proved that he was right. At least, that’s always been my thinking. And I grew up hearing that I wasn’t livestock to be bred, that I was a free creature and it was my right to decide when I felt ready to settle down.”

Within Dim, the smouldering flame extinguished, and he felt a terrible numbness go creeping through his body, just like he had felt when he fled his home during the cold of winter. Now, there was nothing within him, no sensation, no feeling. He hardly even registered the water flowing around his body. The tension left him, causing his four limbs to go limp, and the deadweight of his body made him settle against the hard stones beneath him. This numbness did not last, and he began to notice that there was something wrong with his eyes. It was like walking out into the sun that fateful day, stumbling into the streets of Canterlot when he fled his home. The stars became blurry and indistinct. Life had begun when he had left the womb, the tower he called home. The tower had birthed him, spat him out into the world, an unwanted gift to civilisation from the Dark family.

“Something is wrong,” Dim managed to say, and his voice was so strained that it shocked him. “It hurts… my eyes are all blurry.”

“I bet it does. I bet they are.” Blackbird blinked a few times, her green, slitted eyes flashing in the moonlight, and she brushed a few loose strands of Dim’s mane out of his face. “Let it out, Dim. I can see it lurking. I’ll be here to keep watch for those damn birds. Just let the poison out, okay?”

“But I don’t want to—”

“You don’t gotta choice…”

Author's Notes:

Sorry for the delay! This was going to be up yesterday, but that just didn’t happen.