Cloppenburg was now just another disaster behind him, just like his home, Canterlot, Equestria, The Grittish Isles, Shepherd’s Shore, and Tortoise-Tuga. The vardo, which soared like a hurled brick, wobbled as Blackbird extended the sail down below, and there was more than enough wind to carry them northward. As strange as it was, having the sail stick out from the bottom of the ship worked, and even made sense in a strange way, as a boat floating through the clouds, mirroring a seagoing vessel down below.

Dim found the bottle of rum, unstoppered it, and took a swallow. It burned something awful—this wasn’t good rum—but helped to ease the shakes that had control of his body. He had done something awful, just one more awful thing in a whole long line of awful things, and already, his mind was rushing to justify it.

The pink voice was silent, at least for now, but he had a keen awareness that the presence in his mind was active. He took another drink and relished the sensation of his lips going numb. The sugary-sweet scent of rum burned his sinuses and the fiery sensation crept up the back of his throat while working towards his brain.

When he blinked, his vision had gone grey, and there was no colour in the world. Panicking, he blinked again, and after several blinks, all he could see was a world illuminated in various shades of pink. Or maybe pinkish grey, he couldn’t tell. He stared at the pink world until his eyes began to burn and water, then blinked again. Now, the world looked normal again, as it should be seen through the thick, smoked glass of his goggles.

The vardo ceased being a vardo, and became a birdhouse, because Blackbird was coming in. She crawled her way inside through the back door, but only opened the top half, and not the lower. Being something of a big girl, she had to squirm, wiggle, and jiggle through the too-small opening, and she looked very much like a bird entering a birdhouse. Finally, she pulled herself through, and collapsed down upon the floor spread-eagled and in a heap.

“When I started this journey, I swear, that opening was bigger,” Blackbird muttered while she just sat there, huffing and puffing.

From this angle, from this position, Dim realised that not all of Blackbird was black. Part of her was a bright, vivid pink, and he took notice of this while he took a long drink from his bottle. He grimaced from the burn, shivered, shuddered, and then nodded. “The opening looks very small and tight to me.”

Scowling, Blackbird scissored her hind legs together with a muffled, fuzzy whump, and then she let out a wordless, indignant yowl. There was something feline in her anger, but also something quite equine. She lunged forward, but Dim did not flinch, and with a swipe of her talons, she snatched the bottle from his telekinetic grip.

Glowering at Dim, she took a long drink, then made disgusted, burny-alcohol faces. She held onto the bottle, which was now down to a quarter full, and then in clear defiance of Dim, she took another swallow, downing even more of the precious, limited resource. It was a brave move, a bold, brash, daring move, and Dim acknowledged it as such by giving her a faint nod.

Much had just been said without words, but whether or not an understanding had been reached remained to be seen. Blackbird recovered, and curled into a more dignified position as she passed the bottle back to Dim, who did nothing to stop staring at her. Without taking his eyes off of Blackbird, he lifted his hat, reached up into the shadowy depths, pulled a smoke from his hidden holder, and then, rather than put his hat back on, he set it down upon the floor.

He pressed one end into his holder, and, with a flick of fire magic, he set the other end of the brown paper cigarette ablaze. Taking a few deep puffs, he then exhaled and blew out little flying pegasus ponies that circled around his head. Not only was it relaxing for him, but it disarmed Blackbird, who ceased to scowl and was instead transfixed by the flying smoke-ponies.

“How do you do that?” Blackbird asked while she watched another smoky pegasus go flying out of Dim’s nose. “Your horn isn’t glowing, so how are you doing that magic?”

“I don’t know,” Dim replied, being honest. “I just started exploring my magic, all of it that I possessed, and this is the end result.” The honesty felt good, and Dim felt some of his tension bleed away from him. The shakes were still pretty bad, but manageable. Maybe. The need for a fix was still strong, still aching, and he wondered if, perhaps, further acts of honesty might help those. “I can breathe fire, but I do not understand the biological mechanics of how such an act is possible. There are ponies who can do it though, and I have read books about them.”

“So what did you do back there?” Blackbird asked, and it sounded as though she hadn’t wanted to actually put the question into words.

Sighing, Dim exhaled a cloud of smoke, which he did nothing to manipulate. “I grew up with tales of noble knights. Noble knights that rescued fair maidens. It was something that became entangled with my sexuality, but that is a long and complicated story indeed. Suffice to say, it became my sexual persona, and only by acting out these fantasies of rescue could I achieve a state of working arousal.”

“That’s… nice… I guess?” Blackbird’s hind legs clenched together a little tighter.

“I grew up in a place of unspeakable evil, and that is not something I say lightly.” Dim puffed away, trying to ignore the horrible itch in the back of his mind, his need for another form of release. “Those fantasies of knighthood were the only inspiration of goodness that I had. Looking back, they were the only source of light in my life. This is why I choose to help you.”

“That… makes a little sense, I suppose.” Talons flexing, she watched Dim, never taking her eyes off of him. In an almost shy manner, she reached out, and instead of taking, she asked, “Might I have a puff of that?”

Smiling, a terrible sight, Dim passed Blackbird his silver cigarette holder.

For the first time in her young life, Blackbird felt the fever of lust. Not a crush, not infatuation, but lust. Her talons trembling, she took the silver stem that held Dim’s cigarette, put it to her lips, and inhaled, filling her lungs with clove scented smoke. It numbed her, but also awoke her senses, and as she went light headed she felt a second heart pounding away between the clenching folds of flesh hidden between her hind legs.

She wasn’t sure what her father would have to say about her current situation.

“So you wanted to be a knight,” she said, doing her best to be sympathetic, to understand this pitiful wretch that left her both confused and aroused. “It was the only example of goodness that you had. I can kind of understand that, I suppose. I won’t pretend to understand much of it though. You don’t make a lot of sense to me.” With each word spoken, her curiousity grew, and being a felinoid creature, she had a lot of curiousity.

“The Equestrian nobility were once good.” Dim retrieved his cigarette holder, and then took a long, steady draw from it. He held his smoke for many long seconds before he continued, “Maybe some of them still are. I don’t know. My house, we went bad, like toxic fungus that grows in the dark, and is consumed by the light. I was raised… I was created... manufactured?” After a long pause, he shook his head. “Much was done to me to make me serve a purpose.”

“I’m sorry.” She found herself feeling concern for the pony sitting before her, and a part of her wanted to hold him. Not just for comfort, but for other reasons. She could think of many reasons, some good, and some bad. “I was made the old fashioned way. My father and my mother fucked each other silly every chance they got and didn’t care who knew about it.”

Much to her surprise, he laughed, and it was not mad laughter, which was a relief.

The vardo rocked a bit in the wind, and Blackbird’s keen senses checked on everything. They were drifting now, slow but steady, and heading in a general northward direction. The cobbled together ship creaked a lot, and she could hear the whirring of the propellers mounted to the sides as they spun, which charged the batteries. Blood thundered in her ears and pounded through her kitty slitty. All of her senses seemed somehow both dulled and hyper aware. The terror of her time spent in Cloppenburg was replaced with calm, and the calm had a fuzzy sensation as it traveled through her bloodstream, tickling her insides like a pipe cleaner.

This was better than catnip, which her mother sometimes shared with her.

“So, Dim, why did we have to leave in such a hurry?” Blackbird’s lips felt too thick, both above and below. Her voice seemed strange in her own ears. This joint was a bit stronger than the last one she had sampled. Even if Dim told her the most terrible thing ever, she wasn’t sure if she could panic or freak out.

“I poisoned Grimy’s tea—”

“Why?” Blackbird shouted. “Why would you do that? He was nice to us! He was helpful! He was my mother’s friend! Why did you have to kill him?”

“I poisoned Grimy’s tea with a few ingredients that on their own, do nothing. They need a spell to activate. It was a backup, in the event that he wouldn’t cooperate or wanted to send us off on some foolish errand. Alas, the poison is pretty agonising once it sets in, but it can be stopped with a reversal spell… at least, for a time. There is a very narrow window. Usually, those in the throes of the poison will give you exactly what you want.” Dim’s explanation was calm, collected, and each word spoken done in a way that it was almost like he was teaching a terrible, dreadful lesson.

“But why?” Blackbird whined.

“He was a slave with no will, no spine, who kept others as slaves, and I found that unforgivable. He was repulsive, repugnant, and horrid. He trafficked in the misery of others even though he knew the pain of being a slave. It was mercy that moved me, and a desire to take away a resource from whomever was exploiting the situation.”

In that moment, she hated him, but also understood him, and even worse, she understood the meaning of hypocrisy. It burned into her soul like a brand, and left behind a mark that would always be there, reminding her of her own misdeeds. She couldn’t send Dim away, she needed him, if anypony could help her reach her mother, he was the one. The realisation that she was exploiting Dim galled her, that she was only keeping him around to further her own ends. She resented him for killing Grimy—a part of her hated him—but a killer he was—and a killer she needed.

She hated him for being exactly what she needed him to be, and she was stuck with him.

“I too, know the pain of being a slave,” Dim said, and his voice was soft and strained. “I grew up a slave, not knowing it, not realising it. As a slave, I had it pretty good. I lived as Grimy lived, but better. I had everything. All of my needs were looked after, mental, physical, and carnal. I was left without want and I was an obedient slave.”

“What happened?” Blackbird snatched up her own tail, and began to squeeze it in her talons, but was mindful of her own claws.

“I rose up against my master,” Dim replied, and in Blackbird’s ears, he sounded haunted. When he continued, she shivered, scarce-able to bear his words. “I rose up against her, I turned on her, and I crushed her. I broke as many bones as I could and then I hurled her against the wall.”

“Her… you keep saying her… who was she?”

“My mother…” The word hung in the air, unwanted, unwelcomed.

Horrified, Blackbird clung to her own tail for comfort, and watched as the end of Dim’s cigarette glowed with each of his strong inhales. At the moment, life itself was almost too much to bear, and feeling as though she herself was about to be crushed, she acted. Lunging forward, she stole Dim’s cigarette, placed the silver stem between her lips, and with much frantic puffing, she made a desperate attempt to numb her own pain.

“I am no motherfucker,” Dim said, and his body slumped forward as if being crushed under some great weight.

“Dim—” Blackbird was mortified by the squeak of her own voice, and went silent.

“Every slave that rises up against their master seeks power over them.” He sighed, a raspy sound, and something rattled within his chest. “For a moment, I wanted power over my mother, to make her feel weak, ashamed, and humiliated, just like I felt. I thought that maybe stretching her asshole out might make me feel better. I have looked back upon that moment ten thousand times… and I am disgusted that I regret not taking the opportunity to make her scream. My dreams try to show me missed opportunities every chance they get though.”

Her heart thumping, Blackbird puffed away on the remains of the nail in the holder.

“The problem, as I see it, is that I still wish to be a motherfucker…”

At these words, Blackbird’s nethers clenched tight, and her attraction to Dim wavered. Then, the worst happened. She knew that she could not condemn Dim without also condemning her own mother. Both were killers, both had done awful things, bad things that were incomprehensible in nature to her, and she couldn’t justify her own need to save her mother without also trying to save Dim. Who was she to save one while judging the other?

It was like a painful punch to the guts, and she began to whimper while she puffed away.

Why was one life worth more than another? Why did masters and slaves exist? If one foal was meaningful to a parent, then why not all foals? What was the nature of forgiveness? Why would she be so willing to forgive—to turn a blind eye—to her mother’s actions, but still have the need to judge Dim for his? A million questions of this nature swirled around inside of her head while heavy blue smoke curled out of her nose.

Was there even a name for the types of questions she had?

“You… you’re going to help me find my mother,” Blackbird said to her companion, and she felt her resolve gain some much needed strength. “In return, I’m going to help you get better. You’re going to become that noble knight that you always wanted to be. We’ll sort this out together, okay?” The look on his face, she could not read, and his heavy goggles obscured too much of his face anyway.

“You would do that for me?” he responded. “I would like to be deserving…”

Author's Notes:

When next we begin, it will be at a large body of water...