A strange, fond yearning came over me at the Stable door, for the inanimate things I could no longer call my own. My lamp and desk, my pencils, books, and blankets. All left behind inside. What was mine now? The automatic pistol. The blanket I wore. These unfamiliar things. Shouldn’t I have pressed the issue and asked for more? My Pip-buck had been just sitting on my bedside table. Literal maps of the surface were folded away into books. Next, I was seized with sudden remorse that I had not demanded Shady Sands’ body, to bury outside under natural shade, or to burn and release as a flight of ashes on the wind.

All I had of her instead was a memory. Like a description of light, carefully studied. What I had to do now was express it: to act in her spirit or on her behalf so that in a way, from within me, she could continue to live, and to work brightening changes in the world. It wasn’t really in my nature to be helpful. I’d been too private a pony, inside. It remained to be seen if I could change now.

Could I afford it, was another question? Wasn’t it me that was more in need of help now, without food or water, alone in the dark. All the same, I found the tunnel around me lovely to be in: cool and still, with rough, dark textures all around, and visible moisture on the stalactites overhead. I could feel an intake of fresh, clean air. Actual sky, falling all the way down to me there. I decided to think of this as a place I could return to. And that was something. Some kind of possession: a place to return to, and rest in.

I started to walk against the intake of fresh air, and by shades of blue the tunnel around me lightened and lightened, until I came to a cleft in a pile of rocks, through which the light intensified: my way out.

It felt like pushing through a series of veils, so perceptibly did the light land on my lowered face and eyes. I didn’t quite know what to expect, and still I was surprised when, carefully, I looked around outside.

Clouds. More mist and cloud around me than visible land. All around, in towering structures. Yes, structures of cloud. I almost felt I could see support pillars. And all this under a broad, cloudy ceiling, uninterrupted besides a gap just above me, where high clouds were fringed with light under a view of the morning sky.

The light filtering down from this opening helped me, at last, to see the actual land underneath all this: gleaming wet sheets of rock, green hillsides with scruffy heather and low-growing thyme, and even wire fencing, which all dripped and glistened due to the mist going by. And in every bead of water, a little rainbow. The miracle of light. What a way to find water: to follow these magical reflections, as if Celestia herself were signaling the way. I felt all fear leave me. I felt I would never go thirsty, or lack for light. It was a land of plenty, I kept thinking. A land of plenty.

If only she could see it too. Or was that ungrateful? Should I have been content to have all this, and not to want to share it? How could I help wishing she was there? All the same, I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Not in the face of such a gift. So, I closed my eyes and bent my head, to pray. To think of Shady Sands, and to invite her near. And to think of the holy sisters, and to thank them. And of the ministers, each one of whose presence I could feel…

I felt Pinkie Pie in the high clouds, playing around that lighted gap, and I felt Rainbow Dash in the broad, clear expanse of sky behind. I felt Applejack in the sturdy ground, giving me a place to stand, and I felt Fluttershy in the wet smell of the heather and thyme. I felt Rarity in the jeweled drops of dew, and Twilight in the very spark of life, inside me, which told me I was here, and happy again after long hours of pain.

After gratefully climbing, grazing and licking up dew across the living, misty landscape for a while, I started to notice a definite structure to the surrounding clouds, and realized in time that this was not just bad weather around me: but a ruin. The remains of a large Pegasus city, which now pillowed and towered against the mountainside (as I did seem to be on a mountain now, where out of gaps in the cloud, I could see miles of low country below). It was safe to assume these were not the ruins of Cloudsdale, unless Cloudsdale had somehow travelled miles north. I guessed the low country I could see was the Shy, which I knew hugged Equestria’s northern border. Which would mean these were probably the ruins of Peirene.

Of Peirene I knew only that its history was long and storied, involving many wars. It predated the country’s founding, and for some time had even fallen under Commander Hurricane’s, well, command. Peirene had had some mysterious religious significance, I think, which showed. For around me now were parts of shrines and sacred statues, whose sad disfiguration put me in mind of our own, more recent War.

In our chapel services it’s said (and I believe) that the Great War came as the natural result of our species’ increasingly sinful condition. That the greedier we ponies became, and the more self-interested, the more inevitable the Great War. This means it was no accident, or stroke of bad luck. “The fault was not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Neither were Celestia our Luna to blame. To have used their full, divine power to prevent the war, would have been to prevent a natural result. Our just desserts. Worse: to have used their same power to somehow alter the sinful condition we ponies chose for ourselves, would have been to take free will from us. And however much we harm ourselves with it, we must have free will. We cannot love without it. If we’re forced to love against our will, it isn’t love. Even Luna had to learn this.

So, the War was our fault. Each individual pony’s, because of his selfish, loveless choices. The ministers too, being only ponies and not divine, had become increasingly self-interested. We think of their six actual ministries (Of Morale, Of Arcane Sciences etc.) as repositories for their vain self-interest, leading them further and further away from each other. Towards the end, they were unrecognizable as the friends they used to be. Yet all the same we worship them, for what they were in early days. As examples of a pony’s highest potential. Of what we could have been, by choosing love. Of what we were for a long, happy age.

What changed, I cannot say.

Now these sad thoughts put a damper on the new, free ranges around me, and seemed to make the mist itself drop in temperature. Suddenly now, the ruins seemed quiet. More like ruins. Yes, it was good here, and I’d been able to run and climb. But I’d been reminded now that more had been meant for us than this. Much more. And we’d somehow squandered our good inheritance, and turned against our friends. When once instead, for days without number, over and freely over again, it had been morning in Ponyville.

When I tried to check how far I had come from the Stable’s tunnel entrance, I realized I couldn’t find it. It had been a small cleft in a pile of rocks, obvious from the inside because it glowed with natural light. Now, wherever I saw rocks, I seemed to see shadowy clefts and possible entrances. All of the ones I went and checked led nowhere, or were too small for me to fit inside. I had lost it.

I tried not to think too much about this. Or of the Stable at all, because if I considered even the natural fact that it was underneath me all this time, I started to feel strangled and sick. As if all the ponies inside were as good as buried alive, already growing short of breath. I could have gone on like this for a long time, looping back around, thinking about them again, but thankfully I was interrupted.

I snapped quickly to attention at the sight of an egg, breaking violently on the rocks just next to me. Now looking up I saw, flying silhouetted against the blue gap in the clouds: a pegasus! Agile as a swimmer on the wind, and fast. It cleared all previous concern out of mind, seeing her pass.

That was all I saw for the moment, of the pegasus. It was over so fast, and out of the clouds she had cleared a furrow just in passing. An egg and spoon race, maybe? I went over to inspect the whites and yolk that now patterned the rocks. What a speed it must have hit the ground at, to splash like this! Now I stood there feeling very stodgy and academic, compared to that great athlete.

Picturing her again, the three varieties of ponies seemed far from similar. What a difference between being always grounded and being always able to fly. While to have even basic telekinesis, in contrast to none at all, meant two whole different lived experiences. And then too: the slower, more tactile relationship an earth pony had to have with every item she moved and carried, must of course affect her mindset too: training her to act economically, and not to waste effort. It seemed almost sacred and loving: the idea of turning every page in a book, without magic, just to complete it. Why should unicorns even kiss with our mouths, I wondered, when we substituted in magic for so many other tasks?

I felt very superfluous and spoiled now, being a unicorn. Very mental, and alienated from my own body in a way I’d never considered. Not sensual or attentive at all. Instead: inactive and stagnant. Of course, just what I was doing now: standing around thinking, showed I wasn’t far off the mark.

“Whoops!” said a voice. It was the same lean, graceful pegasus, now hovering high above the egg, noticing it. Next, she dropped out of sight, swooping towards me. The way she moved I could hardly follow. It made me feel two dimensional, compared to these three dimensions she made full use of, flying. “My bad.” Now she was in front of me, holding a wiry bird’s nest of blue eggs to her chest. She was about the same color too, as the speckled blue eggs. “Well, I guess that would have been one egg too many, anyway," she said. "With food as scarce as it is, you’d think I would know better than to overeat like this!”

“Still, there’s really nothing like a fry up,” she went on, as I stood there. “If you can find a few mushrooms, a couple of tomatoes from down in the Shy. A little toast. A can of beans even. Oh, baby.” I was stunned. It was as if, in the Stable, a mare had approached me with a series of exquisite gymnastics: somersaults, back-flips, and then started to talk to me casually about current events, not even out of breath. “Well,” the pegasus said. “I’m Nimble.”

“I’ll say.” After a pause, I realized she meant that was her name. “Oh, sorry. Lemony Cream.”

“Man, retro!" Nimble said. “You don’t meet many ponies named after biscuits or cake, these days. No joke: I know a stallion called Firing Line. Oh, how times have changed. Is this the way it is to be? Will we never see those diamond days, again? You know that song? Sweetie Belle. When that one plays, the party’s over, man.” She was really a fantastic speaker, the speed she went. “So, listen, don’t take offense: but are you not from around here? You seem a little, I don’t know, stunned.”

“I’ve never seen a pegasus fly like you before,” I said, simply.

“Ouch!” she said, smiling, and I felt such free admiration for her then. She seemed so warm, and game for whatever came next. “I like it!” she said. “I can take a joke. Yes, I’m a bit of a clumsy flyer: that’s just how it is. And trust me, I was the first one to find out! Most days I’d rather be cooking, honestly. But this is all still about me. And that’s a tiresome subject, believe me. I think I asked you a question, didn’t I? Where you were from: that’s it. Of course, I’m assuming you’re a pilgrim…”

“Yes,” I said, carefully. I didn’t like to lie to her, but at the same time I was afraid she would be offended or put off if I told her the truth. If she found out that, unlike her, I wasn’t a natural part of the surface world. “I am a pilgrim,” I said, robotically. “I’m from the Shy.” I gestured vaguely toward the lowlands.

“Great cabbages there,” she said, nodding wisely. “So, were you in Peirene to visit a particular shrine?”

“Uh,” I said. Then, either because of how soft-spoken I felt in the face of her, or because of the kindness she’d shown me all this time, I answered: “Fluttershy’s.”

“Well, that’s easy,” said she. “Our only town’s named after it, as it’s just near there. Fluttershy’s Lament. The town’s where all you flightless types stay, when you visit. I’d take you there, but I’m supposed to be getting breakfast ready for my father. And he’s a crotchety old creature, even after he’s been fed.”

“Breakfast?” I repeated, without thinking.

“Aha,” she said, winking at me. “You’re hungry, aren’t you? Say no more, my friend.”

She had mentioned that food was scarce, and I’d seen her lose one egg at least, and yet she took me home with her, to feed me. I felt guilty at first to accept her offer, after I’d been so well provided for all my life. Then I realized that the excesses of the Stable must only have spoiled me, while Nimble instead seemed to have benefited from the natural hardships and shortages involved in life on the surface. She seemed more natural to me, somehow. More eager to still be alive, and to give help where it was needed. I didn’t know her, and these were just assumptions, but it’s normal to assume.

In fact, Nimble had had somewhat of an easier time than most wastelanders: loved and sheltered as she had been by her impressive father. We found him in a high cleft, at the entrance of a cave hidden from view. I struggled to climb up to it over the slicked wet stone, but with Nimble’s help I managed.

Her father was an old, bird of prey-like pegasus with bleary, half blind eyes and a daunting posture. He must not have left their secluded home much now, not being able to see well enough either to fly, or to navigate the tricky wet terrain. When we found him, he seemed to be waiting angrily for Nimble’s return, but in time I noticed that whatever he did, he seemed to do angrily. So that, once Nimble prepared them, he would look down angrily at his eggs, and then eat them angrily. And then say: delicious as usual, angrily.

Neither did he seem to appreciate my being there much. I tried to keep quiet and appreciate the food, which was warm and heartening. It seemed Nimble made her own bread, which we toasted and ate with our eggs. I gathered that the Shy below us was still fertile, and bore grain.

“You know, father was a soldier in the Crop-dusters' secession,” Nimble said, after our long, silent eating. She seemed somewhat embarrassed about her father’s cageyness. I just felt sorry to have imposed. “He and I used to live above the cloud cover.” To my doubtful look, she insisted: “It’s true: we were Enclave citizens, when I was a foal. It’s mostly farm country up there this far north, but when the Enclave started to crack down on worshiping the Ministers, and coming down on pilgrimages to Peirene, well… that was the start of the Crop-dusters' secession. It’s a part of modern history,” she said, proudly.

I must have looked lost, because she tried to elaborate. “You ever seen a pegasus in armor, and a helmet with the bulging, yellow globes for eyes?” In fact, I had not. “They’re horrific. Like cockroaches, oily-looking. That’s an Enclave soldier. There’s a contingent of their army still after us here. Not very well outfitted, under the command of a total sadist. They’re just sore from losing to us in the secession, father says. But they’re the reason pegasi have to live in hiding, here.”

“You’re in hiding?” I asked, feeling far behind.

“Yes. All pegasi on the surface are - didn’t you know?” I shook my head. “Well, it’s true. You’re very fortunate: being a unicorn, you can walk around Peirene freely. And to live on the Shy, what a dream! We pegasi aren’t supposed to be here, in the Enclave’s opinion. We’re all supposed to live in the clouds. But as I say, our little group was able to get free and come here, thanks to father and his friends...”

“You worship the Ministers where you come from, little caster?” her father asked me, quite intensely.

“Why yes,” I said, glad not to have to lie. “Of course.”

“She’s a pilgrim, father,” Nimble said. “She’s here to visit Fluttershy’s Lament.”

“And what, little caster, would you say is the significance of Fluttershy’s Lament?”

“Like being called on in class,” I said, breathily. Nimble laughed, at least. “Well, sir, as far as I understand it - and I’m not a pegasus, so it could be I don’t understand – as far as I understand it, Fluttershy weeps whenever ponies unkindly cause each other pain.” He didn’t nod, or show approval. Still, I went on: “That means, of course, that no minister suffered more than her as we left more peaceful days behind, entering the War. Now today hers is the voice that pleads for peace, in every pony’s conscience. And her lament would be… well, her grief at seeing us as we are, still involved in this in-fighting.”

“What must she think of soldiers, then?” he asked.

“Of soldiers?“ I repeated, thrown. What a question! “Well, I guess if you asked her, she’d say… well, I couldn’t tell you what she’d say. But there must be such a thing, I assume, as being a soldier for peace…”

At this, I saw his glare relax. “That much I still can’t decide, little caster. How much does it hurt her to know what I’ve done? Always, that worries me. But you’ve answered well.”

“Thank goodness,” Nimble said. “You know, you don’t have to test everyone you meet, father,”

“This life’s a test,” he said. And I’d remember him saying it, sitting upright there, his bleary eyes directed out into the mist. The memory was only further intensified by what he said to me next: “Now, little caster, I believe you do hold the Ministers dear. But you’ve neglected one of them today, haven’t you?”

“Sir?” I said.

He trained his eyes on me. “Why don’t you tell Nimble the honest truth, about where you come from?”

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Cautious Nature: +3 to Perception during random encounters
You are also more sensitive to what may cause offence, in conversation.