A pile of stones just didn’t seem like a suitable marker for the Bard. Struggling to remain standing, Dim gazed at the stones and tried to understand the awful pain he felt inside. It wasn’t a physical pain and it was impossible to say where this pain was. Even worse, there seemed to be no way to soothe the terrible raw sensation that persisted without location.

Bombay Sable stood near the stones, her scarf-wrapped head bowed, and her forearms were folded into the small of her back. Though it was difficult, Dim glanced up at her and tried to imagine what she was feeling, but it was impossible. With each attempt, he came up short. Feeling disappointed with himself, he allowed his gaze to fall back to the cairn and he drew in a pained, wheezing breath.

“He was my friend,” Dim said, his words a raspy, guttural croak that seemed to struggle to escape his throat. “I didn’t get to spend much time with him and I feel… cheated. Robbed somehow. I was only just starting to get to know him… to appreciate him… and he’s gone.”

“That’s life, Dim. That is the way of things.” Bombay stood rigid, still, and almost unmoving. “This is our life. Any one of us could die in any number of horrible ways at any moment. Each moment is potentially our last. We’re not like other creatures. We deal in death and sometimes, Death comes to collect her due. I suppose I’ve been listening to the Death cultists. What they have to say is quite comforting.”

“He’s gone.” Dim felt a wing wrap around him and he resisted for a moment before allowing Blackbird to pull him close. Looking around, almost paranoid, he looked at the faces of his companions. Not a one of them seemed to think any less of him and looking closer, he realised that they were in pain too—a pain they all shared together. For a moment, he wasn’t sure of what he was thinking, and his paranoia—his concern on what others thought of him—bothered him.

It was doing him no favours.

“Rather than cower and be afraid, the Bard chose to be defiant.” Motte’s words sounded like gravel sifting. “If he hadn’t used his inspiration magic when he did, I think the fight might have turned out differently. Not good. Not good at all. The Bard drove Eerie crazy with his wild, wacky ideas, but that’s the thing; he always had an idea when the situation went to shit. Eerie loved him, but she also hated him in equal measure. She always said he was a damned fool and that he’d get himself killed one day with his cockamie ideas.”

Bombay laughed, but it also sounded like a choked sob in Dim’s ears.

“Here’s to damned fools, and the fools who follow them.” Bailey bowed her head.

“Blackbird, it seems as though you are now our new damned fool.” Motte, solemn and a bit sad, gave the big hippogriff an expectant stare. “Congratulations on your promotion. This certainly isn’t what Eerie had in mind, but I don’t think she planned for this outcome. Bombay is our new Bard. With Gratin, we have another heavy hitter. We still have Dim, but only just barely.”

Dim, secure beneath Blackbird’s wing, felt a curious dampness in the corners of his eyes and wondered how smoke, dust, or other irritants had somehow worked its way inside of his goggles. In fact, his eyes were burning… stinging… it was a most unpleasant sensation and he didn’t care for it one bit. Motte’s words rang true; this was yet another brush with death and Dim wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

“The Bard told me that Fancy needs to burn to the ground,” Dim said as he fought against the horrible tickle in his throat. He paused and thought about everything else the Bard had said, and Dim chose not to mention that. “To save his home, we have to burn it down. So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll start with the bandits and see what happens. Whomever did this is going to regret the fact that we lived.” The tickle in Dim’s throat proved to be too much and he started to cough; a little at first, but it turned into barking whoops in no time at all.

“We might be expected, since we survived,” Bailey said to her companions, and this got a grunt from Gratin, who stood beside her.

“No one expects Dim.” Blackbird’s serious outburst got a few sad snickers and she waited for these to end before she continued, “If we’re lucky, we’ll find some answers. If not, there’ll be a lot less bandits. Win-win, really.”

Heads bowed, faces adorned with sad smiles and tired, weary, sorrowful eyes, the companions continued to pay their respects to their fallen Bard…

It was awful, packing up the wagon and knowing that one of them was getting left behind. Dim had no companion that would ride with him, nopony that would sit with him and keep him company. Dim would recover on the road as they traveled, and he had been told that he would recover. Would he have time? That remained to be seen. This was no longer a mere job, a contract to be completed. There was killing to do and Dim fully intended to make a spectacle of it.

He watched Bombay, how she moved, how she winced, and knew that she was still in pain. She hid it well, mostly, and reassured anyone who asked, telling them that she was fine. With one eye, could she shoot? Could she still fight? Dim felt such a fierce sympathy for her that it tore his insides and left him with a profound sense of suffering. How could he comfort her? Why was he so compelled to comfort her? Who was this creature and why did she matter?

Aching, he tore his gaze away and looked around the compound. Motte and Bailey had done so much to rebuild this place. Collapsed stone cottages now stood anew, maybe even better than before. Death stood watch near the gate again, whole once more, as if she hadn’t been shattered. This place would go on—life would go on—except for those who were now laid to rest.

So many had been lain to rest; the sheer, indiscriminate carnage was unimaginable.

Rather than say goodbye, unable to bear the pain of parting, Dim chose the dull comfort of sleep.

The rocking of the wagon and the sensation of poppy, static-crackles along with fuzzy warmth woke Dim from his slumber. It took him many long troubled seconds to recover his senses and in his confused state, he though it was Blackbird beside him—but as his consciousness gained potency he became aware that someone else was cuddling him. His first response was to lash out and set everything ablaze, but his higher reason, feeble as it was, quelled this foolish reaction.

He lay beside a giant and he determined that it had to be Bombay. Dim didn’t even come up to her hip; she towered over him while standing and very nearly smothered him in sleeping repose. A part of him wanted to be angry, but this part of him sputtered out of existence like a candle exposed to a tempest. Sure, the cuddle a cute pony thing was annoying, but Bombay was grieving, in pain no doubt, and had reached for him in sleep. At least, this is what Dim told himself.

The giantess stirred beside him, mewed in confusion, and her hot, fishy breath washed over him, robbing him of wind. Carnivores! One heavy arm of hers lay over his body, pinning him, and her torso was tight against his spine. He was no teddy bear, no stuffed toy, no cute, cuddly pony plaything! This was demeaning—but it was also something that Bombay no doubt needed and Dim’s waking mind succumbed to confusion in much the same way a sinking ship took on water.

“Dim… I’m sorry.” Bombay mewed out these words in a sleepy manner, and lifted her heavy arm from Dim. “They made me lay down. I was woozy.” She paused, breathing, her body going stiff whilst she stretched. “I was dreaming about… him. You were the right size and shape, I guess. This is bad. I know how you feel about being touched.”

What came out of Dim’s mouth surprised him a great deal, and he wondered if he was delirious again even as he said it. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.” Panicked, he blinked a few times to check and see if there was a pink cast to his vision, because if Princess Cadance was playing games with him, this wasn’t funny. But there was no pink tint—no sign of the Princess of Love having an active presence in his mind—and his consciousness threatened to collapse into nonexistence from embarrassment.

Of course he minded! But how could he tell her that? Another part of him, a part that he didn’t like, posed the question: How can you be such a selfish asshole? This question he asked of himself had to be rhetorical; he was a selfish asshole. For most creatures, their asshole was a tiny, unmentionable place hidden beneath their tails. But for Dim, he was made of asshole. He was asshole, evolved. His kind had dwelled in the primordial murk and then, in the most assholish move in all of existence, they had collectively decided that dry land was in sore need of assholes, for they had conquered the seas. So Sphincterus Tyrannus Tormentus had pulled themselves from the bubbling primordial ooze and had sallied forth to become one of the dominant lifeforms, unliked, unloved, and unwanted by all.

The heaviness of Bombay’s arm returned and Dim found himself pinned once more. Rather than letting him go, she was pulling him closer. The pillowy softness of her oddly placed chest-mounted mammaries was warm against his neck and she was soft, silky, in the same way that house cats were soft and silky. Among the tall races, the cats of Abyssinia, minotaurs and the like, ponies had replaced house cats as desirable, cuddly companions for one to pet and stroke.

Dim found himself in the worst sort of predicament; his dignity was in danger but his friend was suffering. She was his friend, wasn’t she? Of course she was—the Bard was his friend and by extension, the Bard’s friends were his friends. That was how this worked, right? But now the Bard was gone—dead—and Bombay was all he had left of his departed friend. A lump manifested in Dim’s throat and he suffered a moment of profound confusion.

Friendship was complicated; no wonder a princess was needed to govern it.

Bombay’s soft, fuzzy mammaries jerked and twitched against him. Dim was confused for a moment, there was an odd, puzzling element of sexuality about this, but then he realised that she was crying, sobbing in soft, subdued silence. Her paw fingers curled around his foreleg, but she did him no harm, even as sore and tender as he was. This was, perhaps, one of the most awkward, most unbearable moments in all of Dim’s existence, and he was at a total loss for what to do.

The wagon rocked back and forth, it’s movement like a cradle, and Dim found himself enveloped by humid warmth, which stood out in sharp contrast to the cool autumn air he pulled into his lungs with each laboured breath. It was almost too warm and this left him feeling drowsy. Dim’s psychosis, a forceful, vocal presence of its own, attempted to internalise all of this and cope with this the only way it knew how; by rationalising the use of excessive ultra-violence upon those who might hurt, injure, molest, or otherwise harm the affectionate, grieving cat-creature that held him while she sobbed.

By assigning Bombay as a precious thing, he was able to quiet the discordant, turbulent emotions within, and some measure of peace overcame him. Blackbird was a precious thing, but Blackbird was capable of reckless dismemberment and casual disembowelment. There was a time when Blackbird hadn’t been so capable, she had been a bit more helpless, but something had changed. Blackbird had changed, she had grown, and she had evolved. She too, was capable of gleeful psychotic violence and when thinking about this development, Dim wasn’t sure how he felt about it. The idea of a soft, somewhat helpless Blackbird appealed to him, but the notion of Blackbird the Butcherbird filled him with curious lust that he was hesitant to explore.

There was nothing that Dim could do but endure.

Author's Notes:

And we continue...