Wile would camp alone outside that night, more at ease under her own care, and wanting (I assumed) to set a suspicious watch over the surrounding hills. Of course, I would have liked for us to join her, but I knew the wounded Perigee could use an actual bed to rest in. I was spoiled too, and missed the comfort of clean sheets and pillows. So, left alone in Limerick’s guest room, the two of us had washed our faces, then taken turns in the small, attached bathroom to undress.

It was a small room, arranged as if for visiting children, with its two twin beds on either side. A small, high window allowed four slight panes of light to be cast over the wall and door. Perigee now lay on her stomach in the opposite bed, so I could see the outline of her poor, clubbed wings, and felt uncomfortable at those close quarters.

“I’m glad Wile’s with us,” I said. “In general, I mean. I feel safe with her.”

“I’d say earth ponies have adjusted very well,” Perigee said, after a pause. “It’s another reason the Shy is more stable. It’s maybe ninety percent earth ponies. And they’re usually the most resourceful and self-reliant of ponies.”

“But you do think we were made to get along?” I asked. “Not to live separately?”

“I think our three breeds tend naturally to drift apart,” she said. “In the south, you’ll find unicorns often gathered in towers or colleges: closed, defensible positions. Much like the old castles. Leaving the earth ponies to the land, just as much as in the days of peasantry. And it’s obvious how the pegasi have shut themselves off, as military-minded as before.”

“But yes,” she added, after a pause. “We were made to get along. At least under the Princesses’ stewardship. That’s why they were alicorns: unicorn, earth pony, and pegasus combined.”

I decided to ask a risky question. “You don’t feel... excluded now, do you?”

“As if I’m not any of the three?” It sounded harsh, but I guess that is what I’d been implying. “No,” she said. “A pegasus on the ground is still a pegasus. A unicorn who isn’t casting a spell is still a unicorn. It’s not just our abilities that make us what we are. It’s part of the spirit.”

“I’ve read that Fluttershy had an earth pony’s spirit,” I said. “And that Pinkie Pie had a pegasuseseses... I mean, a pegasus’. Which, if you just think of her flying machines...”

“Makes sense,” Perigee nodded, and I could tell she was smiling; just to picture Pinkie Pie upside-down in the air. “I’d say there are spectrums. Which means you’ll meet hard pegasi like Rainbow Dash, and soft ones. I’m sure I’m more of a soft pegasus. It was always easy for me to conceal, and I didn’t tend to fly much. I’m fortunate now, for that at least.”

“What was your cutie mark,” I asked, carefully. “Before the soldiers caught you?”

“A falling star,” she said. “Coming straight down.” Then, to my disturbed look: “Yes, it’s eerie. I never used to give the mark much thought, until I lost my wings.”

“You don’t think,” I started. "That it means this was meant to happen to you, do you?”

“I’m not sure,” she answered. “I don’t believe that Celestia plans and schedules all things, determining the landing place of every old sparrow that falls out of the sky. But I do think she experiences time differently than we do, and already knows what will happen to us all.”

“Then it’s already determined,” I said, sitting up. “And we have no choice...”

“No,” said Perigee. “Just because she knows what we’re going to choose, doesn’t mean it won’t still be our choice, when the time comes.”

“But why would she mark you this way?” I asked. “As a filly, for future pain...”

“It’s come as some comfort, actually,” Perigee said. “It makes me feel like I’m still under her wing. Like I’m not invalid in her eyes, but just as I’m supposed to be. And however painful it was being branded, it’s meant meeting you and Wile, which I’m grateful for.”

“You’ll fly again,” I said, clumsily, perhaps not respecting the fact that she was happy not to. “Just as long as we can get Limerick’s help.”

“I’m afraid it won’t be much to look at, if I do,” she said. “I didn’t usually get very high off the ground. But at least, more practically speaking, towards the actual reason we’re here, it should allow me to demonstrate for you and Wile.”

“You really think we could learn to do it too?” I asked.

“It won’t be very difficult if your wings are already strong to start with.” She nodded. “On large, strong wings, the wind should carry you almost like a kite. Then it’s just a matter of controlling how it lifts and drops you. Or of going against it.”

“And in terms of fighting in Peirene,” she added. “The Enclave soldiers seem like surprisingly lazy flyers. Unimaginative, too. They shouldn’t be too difficult to outmaneuver.”

“Had you ever flown above their cloud cover, before?” I asked.

“From Peirene,” she nodded. “Resting often on clouds, I used to manage the climb. It was part of my pilgrimage – to see the sun again, and to be reminded that if it weren’t for ponies’ selfish influence, Celestia’s presence in the world would be much clearer. That we only doubt she’s with us now because we ourselves shroud her over with our fear and self-obsession. While all this time, in fact, the source of love has burned as eternally as the source of light, behind our coverings. And she’s been as near to us as our own hearts, if we only knew it.”

I shook my head, in happy disbelief. “I’ve never been able to put it that clearly,” I said. “But that’s what I believe, too. You must have thought about this all very deeply: you seem leaps ahead of me.”

“Ahead of you?” Perigee said, surprised. “Maybe in theory." She smiled. "Not in practice, I don’t think.”

Limerick surprised us the next morning. After we’d made a brief, happy breakfast of Wile’s omelettes and toast, the old alchemist took us out onto the surrounding hills, with us each in an old, grandfatherly bucket hat, to catch butterflies. I was tasked with jarring them, and so I was now yoked to a wagon loaded with clattering glass jars. Wile and Perigee were the catchers, and each had a net. It felt somehow like parading onto a great sports field, but without the actual fanfare.

I looked around us. Once this was all for ponies’ sport: the slopes, the butterflies. Built as if for our amusement, in service of the games we played, with the streams for our splashing, the fields for our galloping races, and the sky for daring flight. All free for us to use once, and inviting. But no longer. And the worst part was: it wasn’t the land that had changed. Not here, in the unpolluted Shy. It was the spirit that was gone. Our spirit of play. As if we’d grown out of those good old games.

This was the first time I’d felt clear, patriotic feeling, as I dreamed of Equestria in its playful prime. As a lost country, whose spirit we’d strayed far from. And now, it was with a tinge of sadness that I watched Wile and Perigee swat their nets over the foamy, autumn flowers, and chase butterflies in and out of the faint shade on the hillside, laughing. Because watching them felt as forlorn as reviewing a precious memory, of days since dramatically changed.

Limerick was near me, as watchful as an umpire over their play, and I wondered what was now stirring in him. After all, in our Stable he would have gotten more or less the same education as me. So, he must still have similar ideas about what the country used to be like.

“Have you seen much of the wasteland?” I asked him, as a prompt.

“Wasteland?” the wispy-haired old stallion said, distracted.

“The rest of the country, I mean. Have you seen much of it since you left the Stable?”

“What for?” he asked. “Ponies give too much of their attention to pretty landscapes, and leave their own mind’s potential unappreciated. The everyday miracle of memory. Or of dreams, and imaginative foresight. These are the frontiers that merit our time and study. This is where true magic’s found, not in travel over land."

I wondered what it must be like for him, then, to be losing his memory. To be so introverted , and to have a once familiar interior landscape fall away under a fog. “Then you must not have minded so much,” I said. “Being confined to the Stable. What do you remember about it?”

“That it sorely lacked for ingredients,” said he. “That the ponies there were uninspired. Too timid and unadventurous to leave, or even to experiment inside.”

“Then you do prefer the outside?” I nodded. On this, we seemed to agree.

“Yes,” he said. “The pain ponies suffer here is at least productive, just as fire engenders change in alchemy. Without friction and movement and heat, there can be no change. So, while the Stable will forever be steady, sterile and cold, with all the stressors of the wasteland instead, every day out here is full of natural alchemy. Conflict, accidental experiment.”

“And in Peirene?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you call what’s happening there alchemical?”

“Elaborate,” he said after a pause, and I could tell I had his interest.

“Well, you have your different elements: the free pegasi and their allies, and then the Enclave’s contingent. With plenty of heat between them, right? And then in the end, if all goes well, you would be left with a new, purified product.”

“With that product being?” he asked.

“An independent Peirene,” I said. “Where, without the constant, sterile Enclave, the same kind of alchemy can continue. That is, between free pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns. Which three breeds, I would say, were the three ingredients that, under stress, were purified in ages past to form the golden agreement that was the very basis of this country.”

“Spoken like a true politician,” said Limerick.

“Maybe, but I believe it,” I said. “Without movement or heat, friendship dies. Without disagreeing elements, coming to agreement, it can’t exist. I mean, that’s just what it is: disagreeing elements, coming to agree. And after what you’ve said, that seems to me like the most natural form of alchemy there is.”

Now Limerick looked ahead, and gave no answer. The girls soon interrupted us with butterflies in their nets, and I started, with careful telekinesis, to place each butterfly into its own jar. Their timing couldn’t have been better. Limerick watched us work, and as one of the butterflies almost slipped free and we all three of us laughed in perfect time, he could perhaps see something golden and pure between us, greater than the sum of its parts. Something good in our agreement.

Inside, we stood idly by and watched Limerick work, in awe of his precision. He knew his instruments well: the gas burners, the scales, the unlabeled flasks. I had the sad task of plucking the wings off of the butterflies in our jars. Next, Limerick carefully scraped the scales off of each wing, like the tiny multicolored tiles of a mosaic. I of course had realized he was working on The Opening Cocoon, his potion to grant the flightless flight, and I tried to follow along over the old stallion's shoulder. It was hopeless, though, at the pace he was going.

Neither did I know much about alchemy, overshadowed as it had been by the more recent, practical pursuits of chemistry and medicine. It was an ancient branch of natural science, whose adherents had most famously pursued, or perhaps even achieved, the successful purification of lesser metals into gold. However, from a footnote somewhere, I did know it was a common misconception that, for the alchemist involved, this effort would have been made in the interests of some final, financial gain, in pursuit of the actual gold itself. In fact, the sincere alchemist’s motivations would more often have been spiritual, with the purification of the metal being seen as an allegory for the gradual refinement of his own imperfect soul, so that the two processes could be said to run in parallel. The gold’s value, then, would only have been as a token or sign of his own successful purification. For it was understood by alchemists that the material, observable world is only an expression of the spiritual underneath – that is, a series of interpretable signs by which the divine communicates itself to us.

So much for my understanding of alchemy. None of which helped me follow what Limerick was doing in the cottage. In fact it was a distraction, because it made me wonder what this potion meant to him. What invisible significance did he see in the outward, observable sign of the wings it granted its user? What did he see: a means to be more than we were made to be? An act of defiance against our creator, and the natural order? A chance to show ourselves off, not as limited creatures of this surly earth, but as members of a higher, more infinite category?

“You aren’t really paying attention, are you?” Wile asked, leaning over toward me as Limerick worked.

“Uh,” I said. “To this? Technically, no.”

“I don’t blame you,” she nodded. “It’s like watching a mathematician write out proofs.”

It seemed even Limerick’s cutie mark was obscure. It was a three dimensional pyramid, with the point sort of hovering over the rest of the base. From the work I’d done arranging his documents, I remembered that this pyramid was the alchemical symbol for air. Or at least, it was in Limerick’s opinion.

“I wonder how he learned to do this,” I said. “I doubt we kept many books on alchemy in our Stable.”

“He might have discovered most of it for himself,” Perigee said, appearing beside us. She had been passing in and out of the cottage, fetching sprigs and seeds from the garden outside at Limerick’s impatient command. “Maybe like maths and music, alchemy just hangs in the air, waiting to be discovered.”

“Come again?” said Wile.

“Well, if one and one make two,” Perigee said, explaining. “Then one and one made two even before somepony came around and wrote it down in workable terms. So, it was just true, always, and hanging in the air. And the same must be true of the melody of What is this Place? The melody must have existed, even before Fluttershy first discovered and sang it.”

“Peppercorn!” called Limerick, urgently. “More peppercorn.”

“Excuse me a moment,” said Perigee. “He needs more peppercorn.”

“Starting to feel like you’re waiting tables?” Wile asked her, as the little mare left us. And once she had gone, Wile lowered her voice and said: “I make jokes because I’m very confused. She said music is discovered? Like it’s just lying around?”

“Hanging in the air, I think she said.”

Wile shook her head. “I feel suddenly like I’m at the shallow end of the pool,” she said. “Compared to you three.”

“You group me in with them?” I asked, failing to hide the fact that I was flattered.

“Well, you do seem to drift off into thought sometimes,” Wile said. “And I doubt you’re just playing tic-tac-toe with yourself.”

“You’d be surprised,” said I.

“What I meant,” Perigee said, reappearing at our side. “Was that all possible created things, all songs and formulas, have to have already been created. Our creator had to have written every song, when she first brought music into being. Because to create the notes that make up music, she had to know or foresee all possible permutations of those notes. And the same goes for numbers, and even natural ingredients like peppercorn.”

“Wait,” said Wile. “You’ve said she. And I think I can guess who you mean. So, are you saying you think Celestia brought music into being? The same mare in the newspapers?”

“Well, yes,” said Perigee. “Or, the spirit which was made manifest in that mare. And which survives her now.”

“Survives her where?” asked Wile, somewhat distressed.

“In you, Wile,” I said, smiling.

“That’s, uh, a lot of responsibility to lay on a pony,” she said.

I laughed. “In all of us, Wile. Like a memory lives, in the friends of the departed.”

And Perigee said: “But it’s still a lot of responsibility. To know we bear her light.”

“But if we share the burden equally,” I said. “Together we can manage it. As a group of friends, it’s easier, not to let her down.”

“Wait,” Wile said. “Wait. Please stop completing each other’s thoughts. It’s starting to get-“

“Creepy?” we both said. And after a pause, all three of us started to laugh, and hard enough that a frustrated Limerick had to chase us out into the garden.

“You, the little pegasus,” said Limerick, meeting us in the garden after some time. “I want you to try this.” He had in his hoof a little bottle, inside of which was a sky blue liquid. “I noticed when you arrived, of course,” he said. “That your wings were only stubs. So, naturally you’ll be interested in this. The Opening Cocoon. You see, I’ve never tested it on a pegasus...”

Was that all, I wondered, or were his motives more compassionate? If so, Limerick didn’t show it.

“Arcane scientists neglect to think of magic as biological,” he said. “But not alchemists. I’ve learned from experience that magic is chemical. And so, as yet, I have no assurances that a pegasus’ natural, chemical makeup won’t interfere with the effects of The Opening Cocoon.”

“Meaning you’re not sure what’ll happen,” said Wile. “If she drinks that.”

“Meaning I can make no guarantees,” he said.

“I’ll drink it,” said Perigee, accepting the bottle from him. “Of course.”

“I should warn you,” Limerick said. “You’ll turn much faster in the air than you’re used to. If it works, that is. Your wings will be more akin to a butterfly’s, which have a broader span. It should also go without saying that you’ll be safer staying below the cloud cover.”

“I understand,” said Perigee.

“Then just a mouthful should do it,” said Limerick, and she nodded, drinking from the bottle without further hesitation, surprising Wile and I.

It started immediately, from the stubs of her wings: fine floating ribbons of an unknown material, wrapping loosely around her, lifting her off the ground. She nodded calmly down at us, as the ribbons tightened and closed over her face, sealing her into a cocoon. She hung there above us for a moment, suspended as if by a fine cord of spider web, and then with a flash: she hatched.

Her new, folded wings were dusky and earth toned - more like a moth’s wings than a butterfly’s. And as Perigee stretched them out to their full span, alarming, asymmetrical cat’s eye patterns opened out, as if for startling small prey. The wings seemed powerful and predatory: not at all like Rarity’s dainty, disco-light wings were described. But at a movement in the clouds above, and a brighter grade of light, the rings around these wings' eyes started to show off iridescent colors. Wheels within wheels, of color.

At their full span, the million scales of the wings’ membrane appeared. Like an advertisement for the many fine, microscopic spectacles of the insect world. An entomologist’s dream. The glossy, alien colors; the accidental patterns, which seemed full of forethought and intention still, as if artfully designed. And all alive and in motion, as Perigee laughed and turned in a small, quick circle: just as she had said, like a kite on the wind.

“That’s unbelievable,” Wile said. “That is unbelievable.”

And beside us, almost shyly, Limerick smiled.

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Speaker: +20% to Speech. You are no better a liar or rhetorician now of course, but whenever speaking sincerely you more capably get your thoughts across.