After his long talk with Eerie, Dim was confused, conflicted, and at a loss for what to do. Eerie, she had wronged him, she was one of the ones who had foisted this cruel fate upon him, and there was a part of him that wanted to kill her for what she had done. This was a vocal part of him and Dim found it difficult not to entertain these morbid thoughts of vengeance.

Weighed down by his troubles, Dim thought of Darling, another who had wronged him. She had so little choice in anything that she did and rather than try to help her, he had killed her. It was one of many things he could have done different, but hadn’t. Why, and for what reason? He didn’t know. Killing Eerie wouldn’t accomplish anything and there could be no doubt, doing so would only make him feel worse. Whatever feeling of satisfaction or instant gratification he would get for killing her now would be offset later with the many morose hours spent reflecting upon hindsight.

The clink of glass distracted him and as his eyes focused he realised that he was staring down at his food, which he had not eaten. He was tired, in need of sleep, and had reached that jittery phase of sleep deprivation. His tablemates were far too busy stuffing their faces to notice his suffering, and he felt a tiny but hot spark of resentment within his breast towards them for this. Eerie was not present for this sumptuous spread because she had vanished once more, off to do whatever was necessary of her.

“Hey, Pot Pie, you have a strange looking cutie mark. I’ve never seen one like that on a pony before.” Blackbird said all of this around a mouthful of food, but Dim was too distracted to sneer at her or complain about her being a disgusting primitive. “I recognised the chicken leg, but what’s that other thing it’s crossed with?”

“A lute,” the Bard replied and then he bit into a chunk of crusty, oily brown bread.

“That’s a little peculiar. The chicken leg I mean.”

“Indeed it is, for a pony, but chicken pot pie is a marvellous meal for romance.”

“It is?” Blackbird’s head tilted off to one side, and she swallowed the contents of her mouth.

“I believe it to be so.” The Bard’s right eyebrow arched and his nondescript brown mane was rustled by the sudden jerking of his ears. “It is a culinary masterpiece, the chicken pot pie, and even with part of my soul stolen, I can bake the best pies.”

Dim’s revulsion almost made him gag, but he somehow maintained his composure. Lacking any sort of appetite, he decided it was time to excuse himself. “If you will pardon me, I really must get some sleep. Excuse me. Blackbird, I think we are safe enough so there is no need to stand watch as we had planned.”

“Aw… get some sleep, Dim. You need it. I’ll check on you later, okay?” Warm concern could be seen in Blackbird’s eyes, and something else, something unknown to Dim. “Maybe I can scrounge up some eggs and fix them for you later.”

“I’d like that,” he replied as his stomach did flip-flops. “Now if you will excuse me, I must be going.”

Holding a chunk of greasy bread in her talons, Blackbird watched Dim go, but wished that he would stay. This was a wonderful time, and wonderful times had been in short supply as of late. As he shuffled for the door, his hooves almost dragging, she sat in her chair, almost holding her breath but not realising it, with her claws sinking into her bread.

Then, with a soft click of the door, he was gone and it was hard to breathe for a time. With a faint mewling sound, Blackbird blinked a few times, slumped down in her seat, and then she focused upon the bread she was holding. It was strange stuff, this bread, and she had never tasted anything quite like it. Oily, greasy even, the bread was almost meaty in flavour.

“What is this stuff, anyhow?” she asked.

“Hemp bread,” the Bard replied while he refilled his glass with wine. “The climate here is rather cool, so not much grows. The hemp grows in defiance of everything, we have cabbages, and plenty of root vegetables. It isn’t enough though, and we still have to import food from elsewhere, on occasion, which bothers Modesto to no end. He strives for self sufficiency.”

“I like it.” Then, without further ado, Blackbird crammed the entire greasy brown hunk into her maw and began to chew.

“He fancies you, you know,” the Bard said as he lifted his wineglass. “But he has a broken heart that is still quite raw. In fact, it might never heal. I have a sense for these sorts of things.” Then, he put the glass to his lips, closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and drank it all down in one long swallow.

Smacking her lips, Blackbird wanted to respond, but her mouth was so full that she couldn’t even try. Was it that obvious to everypony, or was it the nature of the Bard to know these things? She watched as the brown earth pony belched and patted his own barrel while she continued to chew on the difficult to eat bread. Or maybe it wasn’t hard to eat at all and she had just put too much of it into her mouth.

After belching a second time, the Bard pursed his lips and fanned away the sour air with his hoof. He eyed the wine bottle for a time, and then Blackbird saw that he was looking at her once more. His expression was one of curiousity—at least she thought it was curiousity, it was hard to tell—and his eyes glittered with mysterious drunken wisdom that could only be found after one had reached the bottoms of a great many bottles.

“I bet my fatty liver would make for a fine pâté to spread on crackers,” he muttered. Reaching out, he grabbed the bottle in his fetlock, but he did not pour himself a glass, no. Lifting the bottle, he had himself another drink, smacked his lips, and then a crooked smile graced his face. “It probably isn’t safe for me to return to Gasconeigh. I left there in a hurry. I first sampled the tender blossom of the Sheriff’s daughter, found it to my liking, and then I tapped her bung. Of course the Sheriff overreacted, and he and his posse hunted me for quite some time.”

Bombay Sable began to titter and she speared a fig with an extended claw.

“I have no idea how Bombay puts up with me.” The Bard lifted his wine bottle in salute to his companion, and then poured what was left down his throat.

“It is good to be in love and to adventure,” Bombay said as she turned to face Blackbird, her fig still on her claw. “In my opinion, these are the ideal conditions for love to flourish. Being in danger creates just the right situation for the truest of love to develop. A couple that has never been in battle together will never truly know what it means to be close.” When she was done talking, she popped her fig into her mouth and gave it a hearty chew.

Ears pricked, Blackbird swallowed everything in her mouth, and it travelled down her gullet in a hard, dense lump. “I don’t know how I feel about Dim yet. He… he scares me just a little, he scares me in ways that I have trouble putting into words. I don’t want to fall in love, I want to find my mother. But here I am, getting distracted, because Dim and my mother are so much alike in so many ways, and it is easy to like him because he reminds me so much of her. Once I find her though… well… I might just do whatever it takes to wrap Dim around my little talon-finger. But I can’t let anything happen until after I find my mother. Them’s the rules. I don’t want to become complacent and give up. I need motivation so I don’t give in to lazy kitty urges.”

“Lazy kitty urges are the worst,” Bombay said around a mouthful of chewy fig.

“Dim is just so… intense, you know? I mean, sure, he’s quiet, and he scowls a lot, and there are times when I wish that he would talk more, but there is this intensity in him that is just like the intensity my mom had. The way her eyes would flash when she was sizing up a situation or how she would move to intercept some threat that put our community in danger.” Sighing, Blackbird felt something tighten around her heart, and it was painful. “I keep wondering if she is torturing herself because of my father getting killed and I worry that she feels even worse because she let our whole community down. Mom held herself to a high standard and after my father died, I think she fell a long way down. When Dim came back to Pteroșani to rescue me, he had that same murderous intensity that my mother had… seeing him like that, it kind of helps to keep my mother’s memory fresh, if that makes any sense.”

“Why don’t you tell us everything that happened,” Bombay said to Blackbird, “because your mother didn’t have much to say. She had a frantic bloodlust when we knew her. It robbed her of reason and made it difficult to deal with her.”

“I wish I knew where to begin… I used to know, but things have become so muddied...”

Laying on his back, Dim stared upwards in the direction of the ceiling that he could not see. The room was dark, as dark as his namesake, and he was comfortable, so why was sleep so elusive? The need was there—along with fatigue as well as exhaustion—but slipping from this realm to the next was proving problematic.

There was a dull ache in his guts, but he wasn’t sure if it was hunger. Sometimes, pain just happened during his more anxious states and the only thing that had helped was the opium. That was no longer an option now, as Dim had no desire to be a slave to such a terrible master. Just about everything else was fine—his smoking habit caused him no real problem—but the addiction to the coca and the opium had been downright crippling and he knew it.

When he thought of being in a hammock with Blackbird during the journey to Istanbull there was a pleasurable tickle-prickle that began in the region of his navel and worked its way downwards. With this sense of almost-arousal, there was also fear, a profound fear that caused Dim to break out in a cold sweat. This fearful arousal, this terror-filled excitement, this scarousal, it filled him with outright panic that made his heart race and each breath was bottlenecked in his too-tight throat.

His blood turned to ice in his veins and his aborted erection caused his cock to retreat even further into his sheath somehow, all while it felt as though there was a great weight crushing his testicles. Squirming in the bed, he rolled onto his side, curled into a fetal position, and then made a dedicated effort just to keep breathing.

Right about now, he needed the pink voice in his head, but she was silent. Dim suspected that he knew why, too, but wasn’t sure how to approach Eerie about it. He thought of the Sea Witch back on Tortoise-Tuga and how he had suffered after the massacre of Shepherd’s Shore. Perhaps he needed a zebra soothsayer to help him with his troubles.

Sweating, his sheets now soaked, Dim could not enjoy his luxurious bed. Writhing, he somehow managed to roll over once more and knew that he would have to confront Eerie about this and it galled him. Would it start a fight? Would she be angry? Would his own anger get the best of him? The fear of the situation deteriorating into something volatile made Dim shiver, as he was already rather anxious about having to deal with Eerie wronging him, and her part in his dreadful existence.

Snarling, Dim pulled himself up out of his bed like a stubborn corpse climbing up out of its grave. Half-in and half-out of the bed, he stumbled and took a tumble down to the floor. Down on the floor, he grumbled, cursed, and thought about setting everything around him on fire. Forcing himself to be calm, he went still and tried to collect his breath while his hind-half remained tangled up in his bedding.

It was time to confront Eerie and clear the air.

Author's Notes:

So... how does an earth pony get a cutie mark like that, anyhow?