Alive.

Quirk was alive.

The thought was not hard to reconcile with the world around him, yet every view his eyes gave him was still received with deep wonder at the fact and the depth of the world. He had known peace—peace! And he was alive. It was astonishing, unbelievable, confounding. The world absolutely didn’t make any sense at all, but for once Quirk wasn’t bothered by it. The peculiar pegasus had been broken, once already dead in his own mind, and healed with the utmost care.

Quirk walked through the streets, unbothered by the morning’s quick traffic, feeling at rest despite their hurried attitude and his pervasive wounds. He was running an errand, delivering a letter to the library on behalf of his shy savior.

Peace. I always looked for it in the wrong ways, the wrong places; what a mess I made of myself. But I know what to do now.

On a quiet avenue, Quirk stopped and looked in a puddle. There was a garish white scar diagonally cut on his green backdrop between his now-quiet eyes. It would have cut a cold visage on any other, but Quirk knew what it was, and what it meant, and had accepted the pain.

So we learn our lessons.

Quirk closed his eyes and reveled in the quiet.

Then something blue-grey and furious collided with him and knocked him over; he cried out in fresh waves of pain as his assailant pinned him. Quirk looked up into the sky with the sun blazing, and Ditzy’s mane made a vengeful halo in it, nearly blotting the rays out in sharp light—

“Where is he?” Ditzy demanded, incensed, enraged. “Where is Tick!?”