A day had passed of hasty preparation; now we had made our move. Our sole ambition had been to retrieve Nimble and her father, fastened to their crosses at the falls, and even this demanded almost the full extent of the free pegasi’s forces. We had them now, still lashed to their wooden crosses, but alive.

These would remain the strangest memories of my early days outside, as our fleeing and fighting went on like weather, unseen in the heights of the clouds. With the free pegasi colorful and erratic, appearing surprisingly to retaliate, and the Enclave soldiers loud, looming and terrible as thunder - obvious wherever they appeared. Often, our side would be chased out under expanses of blank sky - bright blue fields, left open as if for our fighting. For our retreating, and our returning fire. And with all the blanched, blinding cloud of the higher ruins of Peirene, it felt like a chase across dusted white peaks, with frightened retreats into ever-changing crevasses of cloud.

I found myself alone now, flying fearfully, as hot red javelins of laser fire formed holes in the cloud. The high, floating ruins of Peirene were so disorienting, with old structures all overturned: crooked forums, lopsided arenas, all complicated by breezy, changing patterns of light and shade. I was afraid to pass into and out of the clouds, in case hard, actual mountain was hidden underneath them.

I flew off in a blind panic, not sure how closely I was being pursued. Luckily, the Enclave's soldiers couldn’t afford to spend much time on me, what with more aggressive, higher priority enemies challenging them from many sides. The free pegasi were few in number (no more than a dozen natural pegasi), but seemed to multiply themselves, reappearing at odd angles. I couldn’t be sure, but Nature’s Call sometimes even seemed to appear, like a shark from under the white surf of the clouds, suddenly removing a soldier from play. Wile, I almost never saw, and so I didn’t realize how closely she was keeping watch of me, or how safe I really was.

In the thrill of the moment, overpowering any grief at how Nimble and her father were mistreated, was the gratifying fact that we had them now. That their friends had them again. I landed on a strip of mountainside, and started to run as I came down, resting my wings. Carelessly, I scattered the white flowers there off onto the wind, underhoof. I felt as light on the ground as these flowers, and as free on the wind, knowing that I could take off again at will. In all this time, whenever the thick and inky cloud of fear cleared, after I escaped another soldier, I felt a delirious sense of fun. As if all this were only sport.

Perigee was with us again, somewhere in the same fray, with the contingent of grounded ponies we sent her, all taught hastily to fly. Neither she nor I seemed to do much fighting, but served in supportive roles: she, swinging down to rescue struggling flyers, and I, casting lights over the eyes of our enemies’ helmets. I was grateful for that ability at least, for it was all I had to offer. My magic cracked up whenever I tried to fire my heavy automatic pistol (and missed) and I wasn’t confident I even had the nerve, to aim to kill.

At last, like high pressure, the weight of the pursuing soldiers’ presence seemed to lift, and we were relieved. The gunfire stopped. My heart-rate settled, and I started to see friendly pegasi, coasting quietly along. Out of a break in the clouds to one side, I could make out the ambulance procession we were all that time attempting to draw the soldiers’ attention from. The four pegasi, bearing Nimble and her father’s heavy crosses. With the tired, sagging bodies bound to them, the crosses looked eerie: like messengers in some surreal dream, descendant from on high.

I didn’t know our new allies well at all: the now winged supporters of the free pegasi, or even the more aged and weathered pegasi themselves. In fact, I almost felt I knew our enemies better, for the soldiers’ helmets all looked familiar to me, and seemed to convey the same personality. It was strange, because I didn’t hate that personality either. It seemed humorous - big brotherly almost - like the first guard I had met at the gate of Fluttershy’s Lament. Or the guard that Wile had embarrassed, when he found us crouched in the mushrooms. I was almost fond of them, and wished we weren’t fighting.

Of course, someone had lashed Nimble to a cross - displaying her sadistically. Someone had stopped her easy laughter, and changed the face I knew. One of them. On the instructions of Lieutenant Colonel Hereafter, the pegasus on whose violent stages we now found ourselves: the reason there was fighting here at all. I’d learned in our hours of preparation how resented he was even among the prayerful free pegasi. Pursuing to the disadvantage of his soul, this fruitless, painful combat.

Hereafter was a figure who seemed difficult to forgive, for all the pain his choices caused. He was almost never seen - for fear, Wile told me, of the wrathful Nature’s Call. To the free pegasi, however, he was untouchable, as the death of such an officer would only draw greater government attention to the conflict in Pereine. So, now I could only imagine the stallion, and despite the difficulty, I tried to be generous.

Maybe, far removed as he was, he didn’t realize the pain he was causing. Maybe his orders were fair, but unfairly carried out. Maybe he just gave his troops too much license. If I, like Hereafter, had a contingent of troops responding to my beck and call, how much worse would the consequences of all my sloppily made decisions be? How much more heinous and sudden the results of my own selfish, careless mistakes?

Still it was hard, with Nimble and her father on their crosses. Celestia knows it was hard, not to wish for Nature’s Call just to find the Lieutenant Colonel, wherever he was hiding.

Strange terrain, here. The mountainsides shrouded under cloud looked like hard, dark parts of faces: the bridge of a snout, a closed eye. And in the cloud itself was clear evidence of past architecture: steps and arches, molded statues’ faces, serene, mischievous or anguished. I was sore from flying, and I could appreciate this chance to slow down, here where the air seemed fat and easier to drift on.

Wile and Perigee were flying with me again, toward the free pegasi’s designated meeting point, secluded somewhere across the overcast mountain. Around us here, more rows of small, molded faces decorated the ruins of cloud. One face with forward, graceful features, the next squashed and piggish, and so on. Like crowds of spirits too, the wild cloud, the actual weather, seemed to part above us and then close. Boxed in as we were, it was easy to imagine the ruins of Peirene extending up forever, unseen, pockmarked with these same faces. The faces’ expressions, at least to me, seemed to suggest they were each bearing some kind of eternal punishment – whether gracefully, gleefully, or in futile, agonized protest.

Wile and Perigee were speaking, almost arguing -

“The reason why we have to suffer,” said Perigee, to Wile’s question. “Is that we’re disobedient spirits, confined here in flesh for now, who Celestia knows will be reformed by mortal trials and pain.”

“Fine,” said Wile. “But how are we supposed to know that? Why hasn’t she told us outright? Wouldn’t it have been only fair, or even more effective, to make it explicit what we’re here for? If the wasteland is a kind of reforming prison as per the theory, then I was born in it, grew up in it, and have lived all this time knowing no alternative. And I’m supposed to figure it out?”

“No alternative?” Perigee said. “You don’t ever get a feeling…”

“A homesick feeling?” Wile asked, beating her to it. “An out of step feeling, like I’m not quite where I’m supposed to be? Like this isn’t quite my body, and I, being actually a spirit, don’t really belong here in it? Yes, I’ve heard the line...”

“But of course you know there must be a reason,” said Perigee. “Why should you have these kinds of
homesick, out of step feelings for no reason? Why would you long for more, if there wasn’t more?”

“That’s just it: why should I?” Wile said. “What’s the point? It leads nowhere, I’ve found, and I’ve learned not to indulge that kind of dreamy thinking…” She gestured at Peirene in general, around us. “I find it more useful to think in the immediate short term instead,” she said. “You tend to get actual answers, that way. For instance, at the moment we could ask ourselves: how are we going to get these Enclave sons of bitches out of here for good? Or even more immediate: where is this accursed meeting point anyway? You see, like that. Nice, practical questions. Not riddles. And not eternally frustrating.”

Either this all went over Perigee’s head, or the argument died like a wave against her busy mind, which was still stuck on the initial question. “So, if you disagree with me: what is the reason that we’re confined to this life, and that we suffer this punishment – doesn’t one naturally wonder that, and seek an answer?”

“Wait a minute, I’m getting deja vu…” Wile said.

“And isn’t it obvious we each do have room to be improved?” Perigee asked. “Haven’t you been disobedient, too? Aren’t you in need of reform? In all this time, you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong?”

“Oh, sure.” Wile sighed. “With regularity. But as I see it, it was from birth my so called punishment started. I mean, immediately there was hunger and screaming, right? So, what was I paying for then - as a child? And if it was all deserved, how was I supposed to know that? Nevermind the fact that what lay ahead for me was a life of almost constant punishment – I mean, not to exaggerate, just the basic pain and longing involved in being a pony, alive on this faulty planet.”

“What I’m saying is it’s been Tartarus all along...” Wile continued. “From the start. Ahead of me making a single, conscious choice, I was already being punished. And hasn’t all that early pain (which I didn’t know I deserved, even if I did) hasn’t it now interfered in every decision I have actually made? At least in part, don’t I continue to sin because I’ve been imprisoned here in this arduous wasteland all this time, and not vice versa? Who’s to say, right – under different conditions, I could have been a real sweetheart.”

This struck a guilty chord with me. Under different conditions. Like after a childhood in a Stable, maybe, carefree and secure under what seemed like Celestia’s biased, protective wing. All my life I’d heard that we were being spared, there, and that beyond our little hole in the ground, ponies were suffering wrath without discrimination. How far might I have fallen short then, of my potential, if Wile who had suffered a lifetime of direct, unambiguous punishment, could still seem so moral, reasonable, and brave?

“But even despite the pain,” said Perigee. “Hasn’t Celestia’s generosity been much greater?”

Now, looking over at the stubs of her old wings, Wile said: “Strange that you should ask that.” Then she paused, and shook her head. “Or just think of Nimble now. Was that generous?”

Perigee said: “Now see, the very part of me you’re targeting with your argument: the part that gets upset, when it hears about another pony in pain… well, what must this be, if not a gift from Celestia, and proof of her generosity? Her own compassion, alive in us. Isn’t the fact that we’re alive and compassionate greater proof for her, than that we die and suffer is proof against her? Because of course, we couldn’t die and suffer and grieve unless we were alive in the first place, and already full of feeling. Celestia’s gifts come first, and so we take them for granted.”

“Here, see,” Wile said after an uncertain pause, laughing. “The problem with this kind of argument is: does your doing better in the argument prove that yes, in fact Celestia is alive, and means well for us, or does it only prove that you are cleverer than me?”

We were greeted by a dour atmosphere at the free pegasi’s meeting point, on the far side of Peirene. On a mountainside overlooking unfamiliar country, in the shadow of a defunct array of television masts, there stood a lonesome, ruined and roofless church, whose far, interior wall climbed to a cracked round arch. The stony, rain-pocked cherubs’ faces of the church’s walls seemed almost to shift expression, by the flagging light. Outside, injured fighters lay out recovering in the grass, while others tended to them, all under the pink expanse of evening. Still, I didn’t care to meet the unfamiliar free pegasi now, or even to examine the unseen, southern countryside. As soon as we landed, I started to look for Nimble.

The girls and I climbed into the church interior, and there our eyes were drawn as if by vibrant fire, as we each started to examine the far wall. Gone for a breath was all previous concern. It stunned whatever part of me had until then knit my brow in concentration, to see the divine ruin, left there as if to still fulfill some final, holy function. And under the cracked round arch of its far wall, was a dramatic bas relief of bodies chalky, fair and bright, descending and ascending what looked like a stair, spiraling up to heaven’s stormy gate.

“Father?” Nimble sat below this relief, plaintively addressing the old pegasus. Her father was laid out on his back on a little cot of cloud, like the other wounded pegasi. Their two crosses had been taken off and used for firewood, and the stubs of their ruined wings, almost identical to Perigee’s, were already bandaged.

At Nimble’s touch, her father's frightened eyes, without understanding, started to search her face. Not seeming to know her. Nimble wiped his brow with a cloth, and the old stallion’s skin was pulled taut under the cloth, showing that it was only material, and too much of it: skin in excess, wrinkled as it was, hung on a shrinking frame.

Nimble tried to smile at him, and her father’s own face brightened immediately, as if at the sight of someone familiar and friendly after a long series of frowning strangers.

Her father looked up blearily again, and then started to feel around in the air for her. He had expressive and heavily bagged eyes. His mouth hung heavy and wet in the matted hair of his unshaven face. Strangest of all was how little he moved – that is, in all but his eyes. His health had deteriorated obviously. The cruel procedure, which Perigee and Nimble both survived, had wracked his old body to within an inch of its life.

“Is it you?” He asked, and started to feel Nimble’s face. “Of course, it is. Oh precious face...” Nimble lowered her face, to touch her cheek to his. “Small, precious face,” her father said.

“Father,” said she. “You’re damp all over.” For now his face was little more than a sheen of sweat and tears under her shadow, and the watery rims of weeping eyes. We three stood by uselessly, in awe of this.

“I see your mother’s face, in yours,” he said to her, and for a painfully drawn out second, he closed his eyes. “Nimble,” he said again, at last. “I’m forever with you. Your mother's with you. Part of what I still can see, in your familiar face. A secret meeting, between us two. Forever undisturbed. Alive, in you.”

“I’m passing now,” he said. To which Nimble shook her tearful head. “I’m passing.” Then he closed his eyes again. Yes, he would die. It showed on him, however difficult it was for us all to admit. The fact pressed hard on me, and pained my heart like a large, coarse pit in too small a peach.

The old stallion’s last, strangled words reached only Nimble’s ears. Or, only she could understand him, for she had heard this small and frightened shadow of her veteran father’s voice before, by night, and woken to it.

She pressed her head close to his chest, and found no pulse there. She turned her father’s face toward hers, still interacting with his lifeless body. But what was this flesh, now that all magic was gone from it? Nimble cried for help, as her father’s body started to sink into and disperse its cot of cloud, no longer enchanted with whatever subtle magic allowed pegasi alone to rest thereon.

Perigee and Wile hurried forward, and supported the body. I just stood there, feeling like the floating, unnamed point of view that watches a dream. As Nimble tried, too late, to revive her ragged father, and as the other, unnamed free pegasi rushed around us with clamor and urgency, attending to their wounded. I stood unmoving in all their commotion and stared what seemed a mile down, into the old dead stallion’s eyes.

Nimble would tell us later, what it was her father had said to her as he lay dying:

If life be long, I will be glad
That I will long obey

If short, then why should I be sad
To soar to endless day

Why should Celestia have allowed this? Why shouldn’t she have intervened? Now I felt her presence in a new and doubtful way, impassive over the wasteland, seeing the minute details of ponies' pain, and never intervening on behalf of the living. And what had I done, to deserve her protection? Why should Celestia have sheltered us in the Stable, and abandoned our nearest neighbors to this painful argument and strife? That seemed so arbitrary. How suffering was dealt out across the species at large seemed arbitrary.

Was it a test, this life on earth? And did those that suffered more somehow need stricter testing? Toward what purpose, then: why should we continue to be born? What benefit was there to Celestia, to trap more hapless spirits here in flesh, on the grounds that long life and pain would somehow purify them?

Of course, whatever the reason, I was not ungrateful to be alive. Not ungrateful for whatever vital force allowed Wile’s fires to warm me. Nor ungrateful to whoever laid the groundwork of the mountains that stood so firmly unaffected, even now. Yes: to Celestia, I was grateful.

But why put more and more ponies here, just to age and suffer, even centuries after the balefire fell? Why keep our race alive, if somewhere far away the best of us were already laughing and playing, by undying light? Why continue this strange exercise?

I loved Celestia, of course, but that night I would pray to understand her methods.

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Mysterious Stranger: Chance of gaining a temporary ally in random encounters. You seem often to be spared the effort of fending for yourself, thanks to the intervention of your friends, the wrathful Nature’s Call, or even unseen helpers.