Children's stories hold back what, exactly, to spare the child? What is it that’s supposed to be censored out, for their sake? In children’s stories you'll hear about blushing and hoofholding, but never immodest desire. Arguments happen between friends, but they are always resolved. The characters have lapses in judgement, but it's only to learn from them. And any unfair abuse or mistreatment must always come from figures with a dark or toxic mark: established bullies or goblins, who have willfully turned against happier society.

So, what's being withheld for the sake of the child? Just ambiguity? Just the long uncertainty and suspicion involved in adult life, where the motives of our neighbors are unknown, and arguments often leave behind trace grievances, even between friends. The loneliness of adult life, where no one necessarily catches our daily lapses because we more often lapse alone, without the forgiveness and improving guidance of a Celestia-like figure. Without a guide, to catch us lapsing, and to guide us. Without the parental figure who clears ambiguity away, but falls behind us as we run ahead, to become adult.

We’re all of us like little foals playing a game, compared to him. Wasn’t that what Keats had been? Like a parent to the free pegasi.

The girls and I didn’t stand a fighting chance now: we were as good as bound and gagged, at the sight of Keats’ corpse. Two unusual soldiers stood on either side of the Temerity’s rear hangar, in glossy blue, dragonfly-like armor, armed with plasma weapons. The hangar’s door was open to a view of far, unknown landscapes, and Keats’ neck was slit down the middle, spilling spurts of paint-thick blood onto the floor.

“I find myself alone here,” Hereafter said, still cradling his rival’s great, lifeless head in his lap. “Alone, and failing under the weight of my endeavor.”

Wile and I were shrinking back, embracing each other, with Perigee like our leader now in front, somehow able to bear the sight of Keats’ body. The open hangar door partially silhouetted Hereafter, behind Keats. He was a middle-aged stallion with a barber’s pole mane and large, dark eyebrows over tearful eyes, which now reflected dots of light from an unknown source. The collar of his officer’s jacket was unbuttoned, and his hair was curling and sticking to his forehead, from sweat.

“I look down on my own feelings just the same as I look down at the page when I write,” Hereafter said - to who, it wasn’t clear. “I seem to say things, and do things, but inside… I’m only watching. None of it’s sincere, since she died. Always, I turn my head to look around me, hoping to be affected: slighted, irritated, wronged, and so to become upset. Just to pass the time. To be distracted from this long, painful vigil, over my darling Daymark’s grave.”

Was he speaking to us? One of his guards shifted uncomfortably, also unsure.

“I thought slitting her murderer’s throat at last would change things,” Hereafter said, speaking freely, as if we were all of us on intimate terms. He shook his head. “I remember first seeing her infant face,” he said. “She was the very bliss I felt I’d lost, long ago in life, growing out of childish things. Now, even as I’ve aged and lost enthusiasm, memories of her remain, disguised in dreams, giving color to my life, like flowers on the tomb of youth.”

“You’ve disrespected her sacred memory,” Perigee said to him, firmly. “Doing this.”

The Lieutenant Colonel looked down at Keats now, too. “I know,” he said. “I can see that, suddenly. I see myself much better, now, for what I am.”

“And what’s that?” Perigee asked, pressing him.

“Another pony that should not be alive,” he said, without hesitating. “Where instead I used to cling to life, and tell myself I’d been unfairly cheated by it. But I haven’t been cheated. I get what I deserve. I’ve been afraid to understand: I choose this. I’ve clung to my unhappiness. This unnatural life, without her…”

“It should have been your own throat, then," Wile said, teary-eyed but speaking viciously. “That you slit open.”

“Too easy,” said Perigee, shaking her head. “Choosing to die, rather than to really change.”

“But why should I live?” Hereafter asked, looking not at us but through us. And at last I understood: he was speaking to us now as you would speak to the figures that meet you in dreams, where no one is a stranger, but all seem somehow familiar. Avatars of your own shame and guilt. You yourself, laughing at your own nakedness.

“Aren’t I as invalid as the mobs of the wastes?” he asked us. “A parent without a child. No wonder I’ve suffered so long: sad, unsatisfied. It’s the natural punishment for my trespassing too long here, alive. The proof of this not being my natural home, anymore, without her.”

“Then, where should you be instead?” I asked him, over the knot in my throat.

“With Daymark again,” he said, and looked down at Keats with great fondness. Or, at the shroud of death that covered him. He said: “Given it’s a doom and guaranteed: in a way, I’m already dead. More dead than alive. It’s that certain. But see how I pretend, making my days out to be of lasting consequence. As if my actions in this short interim matter. Meanwhile, what is there to do, here? It’s all just more game playing and protesting against. Like I first protested being born. So, why shouldn’t I die, and return to whatever darkness I was pulled from? Why shouldn’t I go back to her, there, now?”

“Safe travels,” Wile said. “You scum. You’ve done a lot of damage figuring this out for yourself, you know that?” She parted from me, stepping forward. On either side, Hereafter’s silent guards braced themselves. “You’re to blame, for the shape our part of the wasteland’s in. If it’s as warped or unstable as you are, it’s your fault.”

“It’ll feel like flying homeward, to die thinking of her,” Hereafter said, not seeming to hear Wile. “She’s as close to me as my own heart. She’s already with me, the actual me. While I’m still a little ways off, and traveling their way...”

“Why won’t you think about what you’ve done?” Wile asked, really mystified, speaking with aggression. “Why didn’t you question yourself, all this time? It wasn’t right. Striking out always at the free pegasi, for stepping out of bounds. Why? You could have made it all different. Left violence out of it. Made concessions. Not kill them. Why kill them? What a difference it would have made, if you’d been gentler.” As she said this, she was still concealing tears, eyes stinging.

“That’s all only distant memory now,” Hereafter said, obtuse to Wile’s pain. “I’ve felt far above of life, and all of you. As far removed as a pony is from the beast folk, or the beast folk from the plants. Yes I remember, I felt so far above it all. Not a shaft of light from Keats, or any of you, could reach me in my selfish cloud.”

“Then you realize you were selfish?” Wile asked, surprised.

“Oh, yes,” Hereafter said. “I realize that. It’s all much clearer now with Keats dead, and no goal to turn my thought towards. It feels like waking up from long sleep, in fact, but as a younger pony after all this time, still in this stiff and heavy body, whose life is spent.”

“There’s still time...” I said. “Your soldiers would change after your example. You could lead them out of Peirene...”

Hereafter shook his head. “I’ve caused too much damage already,” he said, and then almost prayerfully: “Let my life end. Finally, let it get clear and away from my wasteful influence. Out of my hooves, and away from my tampering. Take this life away from me, away from my damaging hooves.”

And I’d never seen a prayer so quickly answered.

One of Hereafter’s guards was knocked off his hooves then, and thrown to the wall beside us, as the percussive round of a gauss rifle suddenly penetrated the hangar, and made its ruthless impact. I knew the cause; I remembered the feeling, like my guts had been turned to jelly. It was Nature’s Call, far off out of sight, but bearing on the ship.

“Leave it open!” Hereafter shouted, as his surviving guard moved toward a console, to close the hangar door. “Let her in.” The soldier hesitated for a breath, but obeyed.

Outside, I could see her now: harrowing the clouds, homing our way, glinting in the very sunlight she revealed in her disruptive wake. Word must have reached her somehow that Keats was aboard the Temerity, for here she came. Gleaming in the light now, like the leading edge of a sword.

I made my choice quickly, pushing past Hereafter’s remaining guard, and prompting the hangar door to close at the console. Another gauss round landed hard, close behind this second guard, inciting him to gallop forward and go sweeping out of the now closing hangar, firing a volley of plasma rounds. Puny-seeming rounds, as they vanished into the sunlight. It wasn’t long before this second soldier was thrown abruptly off course, on lifeless wings.

Hereafter had abandoned Keats’ body now and was pacing excitedly, facing Nature’s Call outside. It seemed the heavy door would close in time to shut off her attack. Not, however, before Wile could hurry forward, and push Keats’ corpse gracelessly out of the hangar. Trusting the free pegasi below, to catch it. Or perhaps hoping that Nature’s Call would abandon her attack, to dive down after it.

For ours was a strange assignment: to spare our enemy Hereafter, as Keats had asked us to. But more than sparing him ourselves, to somehow spare this enemy from our own wrathful friends. He had to live, to have time to change, and choose again. There would be no peace in Peirene otherwise.

Here for the moment, at least, he was safe from Nature’s Call. I had made a choice, and set my will against hers. Now with the heavy door groaning safely to close, I was reminded of my last moments in the Stable, with its own heavy, closing door.

There are very short-lived moments of joy. Very short-lived. Like glimpses of bright, cathedral mountain peaks through a veil of mist. And where once I felt foggy, shortsighted and unsure, this last moment of choice had seemed to clear the mist, and shown me sky clear and blue. It felt like I’d been taken out of a room, cramped and dark, and put outside. Like my old, small life was over somehow, taken by ambush.

I felt for the first time, although it had always been true, that my life was mine. That I determined the nature of my days. And I felt this in me like a waking, magical gift: the power to choose.

As we moved Hereafter back into the Temerity’s choked, dark passageways, we felt the ship start wildly to bank to one side, with its unseen pilot taking evasive maneuvers. The motion threw us against a wall, with Wile and I both already hiccuping for lack of potion, and with heavy, half-open cabin doors swinging dangerously down the passageway. Outside a sunny porthole on the now slanted wall, I got a glimpse of the soldiers and free pegasi fighting below, as if for rights to the church ruins. We seemed to be pulling away from them. The ship was righting itself, and Nature’s Call’s appeared to have eased off, for now.

“This isn’t good,” I said. The girls, Hereafter and I were all of us splayed out on the floor, around the oval of light from the porthole. We had brought Hereafter with us by force, thumping and pushing him to follow. The wracked old stallion was in no condition to refuse, or to defend himself. “She’ll kill him,” I said.

Hereafter’s undershirt clung almost transparent to him, under his jacket. He was on his back now, just lying in the light there, vacantly. To one side, Wile had such contempt in her eyes, for him. On the other, Perigee too was looking queasily down. Nature’s Call had either lost the ship, or was still pursuing it from afar, for it no longer shook from her onslaught. I felt I was alone in feeling sorry for Hereafter. To have lost a child...

“What was she like?” I asked him, as the quiet settled briefly over us. “Your daughter, Daymark?”

The Temerity seemed to have broken out over the cloud cover now, into the windless, crystal spaces above, for the sun continued to shine in interrupted from the porthole, as I waited for Hereafter’s answer.

“It felt as if... I was her closest friend,” he said. “Her playmate, when she was small...” Now the great, high leagues of sky outside seemed not to move at all, even as we sped passed them, fleeing north.

“My life started over,” Hereafter continued. “I lost all my bearings, as soon as she arrived. All previous accomplishments shrank away, and the past looked far off or half familiar, as if seen reflected off of glass. While the present instead - the little filly in front of me, whose hair I would wash – that became so clear. Naked there under drops of silvery water, a living miracle. And I had no knowing commentary to add, and no expectations, and so I stood by gratefully. Just glad to be there, alive and in sight of her.”

“You said you felt like playmates,” Wile said, softly, surprising me. “Like little children, together?”

Hereafter nodded. “Passing days in games and pageantry, as playmates, she and I.” He seemed so ready to divulge his every thought. I started to feel like we were close. That we had met.

How could it be that this same fondness and grief, which he and I both felt for our lost loved ones, could appear in two separate ponies? Like the same species of mournful flower springing up, on opposite ends of the earth. Yet identical, almost.

“My own childhood...” Hereafter said. “I have only partial memory of. And what I do remember seems out of place somehow, as if only seen, not lived, like glimpses into the life of another creature. One of smaller size, with a smaller face, whose eyes seemed to fix on every fan and spray of light, across every windowsill and frond. When I was happy.”

We could see him searching, thinking back, and we waited for him to speak again. “Yes,” he said. “She taught me what it means to be like a little child. She showed me, that as children. . . we each knew that we were small, and that we had no influence or say, so we delighted in what we were given instead of what we could take. Less able to take for ourselves at all. Less able to assume the lead and feign control, or to hold ourselves in great esteem. As little children, small and grateful, prepared to learn, aware that the wealth of the world's information belongs not to us: but is passed down by generous transmission.”

“Humility,” Perigee said. “She taught you. Lower sights, and happy mediocrity. To be mediocre, among fantastic things. Never to jealously compete with the wheeling light of day, or to aspire to Celestia's majesty...”

“Yet see what I’ve made of it?” Hereafter said, his eyes seeming to cloud over. “Worm that I am, I've competed for acclaim, and waited to be celebrated. Always, I've wanted validation, or else felt resentful because I don't receive it freely. In daily outpourings of unambiguous praise. Now I’ve killed old Keats, who was so loved. I’ve lived in a self-preserving panic all this time. The same long, background panic over the invalidity of my life. All around me, the deep, blank night - and here I am, slinging off little flashes of panic and feeling, all failing quickly or eventually against the dark, with no one to catch or see them. No one to really hear a word I say, or to register one tremor of my pain. As my every thought drifts into the dark...”

“But she’s there,” I said. “Daymark. Her memory is still with you: your bright, unfailing friend. You must keep trying, for her sake. Your life is still worth living, and friendship and laughter and shared experience are all still permanently worthwhile. All pleasing to Celestia, if Celestia still lives...”

And of course, she did.

“If there is a final purpose to our life on earth,” I said, to him. “Or to our expressing love and gratitude, we cannot know for sure. But I believe it. As much as I believe a flowering tree should flower, as it’s been made to. Because that’s clearly what it was equipped to do. No, it isn’t an accident that we’re alive… or even if it was, then a happy accident. Far from a mistake.”

“A happy accident...” he repeated. Just words, but they seemed to have reached him. By his eyes, where his guard seemed all let down, I felt sure that he had heard me, and known I was sincere. That somehow, I’d gotten my thoughts across. And seeing this, I felt almost as if Wile, Perigee, and I had been purposefully arranged in this way, here around the Lieutenant Colonel.

An ominous thud interrupted us, from outside, as the ship was hit again. Now the floor seemed to fall a few inches out from under us, as the Temerity dropped on the air. Into our clothes, under our ears, applying upward pressure, the sky itself seemed to flood in, all this time so broad around our meager ship.

We continued steadily to drop. I tried to catch my breath, and failed. I suddenly felt small under our view of the sky, stretching out so high and full, but which I now seemed unable to draw breath from. The porthole clouded over, and its soft little oval of light on the floor disappeared. Already, any lasting warmth the sun had lent our little space was slipping away, like a living spirit, leaving us.

Rain started to speck the glass. Soon the windows were slick with sliding water, or else darkened with overgrowths of cloud. Next, we were slammed to the floor as the ship steadied itself, chugging head-on against the turbulent cloud cover. Then, the Temerity started to gain altitude again.

Inside meanwhile, it felt as if I was being forcefully held down; my pounding forehead to the floor, still trying just to breathe. With my legs folded under me and hair over my face, I stayed there, not registering Wile calling my name for a response. It felt like my lungs were being squeezed dry.

At last, we crested back into the light above the clouds. Or, so I thought at the time: in fact, we had reached the furthermost rim of the cloud cover. Our country's northern border, across the Shy, where even the Enclave's influence reached its limit. Now the shadow of a single, high-flying pegasus passed quickly across the porthole, and over the backs of our heads.

There was another heady thud. Another round from Nature’s Call. Then, like a bird with its wings wide on the wind, meeting sudden turbulence, the Temerity trembled dangerously again on the forward-leading line. And whatever usually righted it, whatever system was supposed to keep it steady, failed it now. Instead, the ship went dropping off of its appointed course, like a bird falling limp off of the wind.

Our bodies were floating an inch again, off the floor. Spots started to appear at the corners of my eyes, seemingly hovering around my friends, and around Hereafter, as the ship fell. And I still wasn’t breathing.

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Action Girl: Additional action point available in combat.