It had hurt Nimble that I lied to her, I could tell. She was quiet as she guided me toward Fluttershy’s Lament, down a grassy vale. It was as if a sheet had been thrown over her; she seemed so subdued. Her father instead had been satisfied as soon as I told them the whole truth. He seemed to know about the Stable, and had listened unsurprised as I described the recent, dark maneuvers our government had made there. When I was finished (not going into painful detail), he had given his permission for Nimble to escort me into town. He assumed she wanted to escort me. I wasn’t so sure.

Applejack, the sight of whose frowning green eyes would have ashamed me now, had always seemed to be the most maternal and, at the same time, zero tolerant of the ministers - because of course the difference between the truth and a lie is not up for argument. A pony can accidentally be over-serious, ungenerous or unkind. But how can one who knows the truth be accidentally dishonest? I for one had been fully conscious of the fact I was lying to Nimble. Worse: I did it to impress her, to make her think I was as natural here as she was. How much more unnatural must I seem to her now, as a liar? What is there in nature that lies?

“If you listen, here, you’ll hear water,” Nimble said, stopping midair. It was true: a far, crashing sound of water, which to me at first, sounded unpleasantly like static from the Stable’s PA system. “Those are the falls at Fluttershy’s Lament,” she said. “You’ll have to go on alone from here, but if you just follow the sound of the water you’ll arrive in town. Please be careful. It’s a beautiful town, but looks are deceiving.”

I worried for a moment that that last comment was directed at me, but I was right in deciding that Nimble would speak her mind if she meant to, and not cruelly insinuate. She only meant the town.

“You aren’t coming?” I asked.

“I can’t,” she said. “You won’t see any free pegasi in Fluttershy’s Lament. The Enclave have hostile infantry posted there; even a recruiting office, for civilian helpers.” At last, she laughed again, saying: “Now, no matter how nice they are, don’t sign anything! They have actual coffee in their office, I’ve heard. Sometimes I think I can smell it!”

I couldn’t bear the guilt: to have hurt such a happy creature! So now in one awkward breath, I blurted out: “Nimble, I feel like I should formally apologize -“

“Informally would be better,” she interrupted, smiling. “Seeing as we’re friends.” Just her saying that made me feel the guilt start to wash off. She made it easy: her smile alone cleared the skies of a stormy conscience. “I can see why you felt you had to lie,” she said. “You were just afraid, that’s all.”

“Well, no, that isn’t all,” I admitted. “It was more that I wanted you to like me. Because you seem like so much a natural part of this place, as much as the mist and heather. And I want to seem natural too.”

“Well, you don’t want to seem natural!” she laughed. “You want to be natural. So, be natural. Be Lemony Cream! I don’t think you’ll end up wanting the friends who only like you because of where you've come from. Take me and cabbages, for instance: I like cabbages from the Shy not because they’re from the Shy, but because they’re good cabbages! Yeah, that’s what I mean. It doesn’t matter to me where you’re from, Lemony Cream: I think you’re a good cabbage!”

I felt so bubbly and good at that, that I was almost glad I'd lied, as it had allowed me this to chance to make amends. And to think again of Applejack’s green eyes, clear and no longer frowning.

Fluttershy’s Lament was like a dimly remembered dream, with its parts all out of joint in the heavy mist, each seeming to float alone, disappearing, reappearing. On either side of the white falls at center (whose summit could not be seen), were squat stone houses arranged along two rising, squiggled paths. Or rather, the suggestion of houses: a glowing arch, a short staircase, a mossy dome in the mist. Set along suggestions of paths. The two sides of the town were linked by a delicate stone bridge: whose motionless silhouette spanned the violent falls. At the bottom of the falls, on the banks of a wide, flat-faced river, mushrooms taller than me grew in the eternal shade. The whole area was filled with a constant hush of water, of course, which smaller falls off to either side contributed to.

There was no statue or obvious tribute to the mare the town was named for (for these old stone houses predated her, in fact), but I felt the mood and spirit of her in the hush of the water over the shy, secluded town. And in its close marriage to nature around it. Approaching her cottage might have felt the same way.

But you would have had a friendlier welcome there, I think. I passed under the wide arch of the unmanned front gate, which stood alone at the bottom of the town’s leftmost path, and here found a small campsite based around a squat, portable satellite communications mast. A small generator hummed there too, and a box of tools sat vibrating slightly on top of it. It was a sad fact that the forms and textures of this artificial gear looked more familiar to me than clouds and water. A stallion in a hazmat suit was peering inside a panel of the communications mast. Nearer to me was a horrific, stallion-sized fly with bulging yellow eyes and a bottle green carapace. A pegasus, actually, somewhere inside this insect’s suit of armor.

After this, I would forever assume that the Enclave were, either now or historically, conquerors of big bugs, attacking hills and hives across Equestria, and taking this unusual armor as part of the spoils. What rational pony could have dreamed up these designs? What sane government would commission such demonic, cruel looking armor for their supposed defense force?

“I ‘aint your mama,” said the soldier, after I’d been examining him for a while.

“The audio jack’s corroded again!” shouted the stallion in the hazmat suit. “I can’t believe this. Tell me: how are we supposed to make any progress here when we can’t even communicate with our superiors?”

He came out from behind the satellite mast. “Well, I say superiors. One has to wonder, these days.” I was surprised to find him addressing me now, as if I’d been there with them for hours. He’d removed the visor of his suit, all dotted with condensation, and was looking at me with bemused eyes, nested in fine, premature wrinkles from his frequent squinting. “I mean honestly,” he said. “My education’s going to complete waste in this savage’s country. We’d be better off using carrier pigeons in such mist.”

I decided to make the most of his candor, and get some inside information. So, undaunted by the armored soldier’s steady glare I said: “What’s the purpose of your being here, anyway?”

“That’s just it: well said! What purpose?” he almost wailed. “I’ll look back on these months of my life, and find them all easily surmised in a single memory of a corroded circuitboard. Or of a wet visor. I wish we’d never rediscovered these falls. That’s what’s trapped me here, isn’t it? It’s all about the water, ostensibly.”

“Ostensibly?” I asked.

“It means apparently,” said the soldier in armor. “But perhaps not actually.”

“Thanks,” said I.

“Of course, I suppose even I need a glass of water to drink, now and then,” said the smaller stallion. “I understand it’s a valuable resource, of course. It’s just a shame that it’s so wet.”

“You’re here for the water?” I asked. “What about hunting down the free pegasi?”

“Oh, not you too!” he cried. “I hear enough about the free pegasi from our C.O. Talk to him, if that’s your game. He doesn’t care what we’re here to do, so long as he gets to hunt free pegasi for his own sport. I, madam, in stark contrast, am an academic. Learning is all that I pursue. I’m only here to perform my duties as an engineer.” Then, grumbling, he added: “weather permitting.”

“I think you’ve asked one too many questions now, girlie,” the armored soldier said to me, effectively stopping my tongue midway. I didn’t seem to have to ask, however, to be freely given more information.

“If those so called free pegasi would only let us have the water,” said the smaller stallion. “Then there wouldn’t be a problem. But no. Never mind that the Enclave could make much more efficient use of it. Never mind that we have thousands of citizens and acres of farmland to support, cloudside.”

I felt fortunate to have met Nimble and her father first. It was better to hear both sides. “Couldn’t you all share the water?” I asked. All this time we were speaking under the sound of it falling down, endlessly.

He gave a huge sigh at this question. “If only. I myself am so fed up that I’d happily come to some kind of compromise. However, there are three complicating factors. First: our commanding officer seems to enjoy fighting the free pegasi. Second: the free pegasi insist on worshiping the six Ministers as divine, which is illegal cloudside. And third: the law mandates that any civilian pegasus who has come down to the surface must be branded as contaminated, and denied continued citizenship in the Enclave. So, we could never share water with them, as surface dwellers - or for that matter, with the wastelander pilgrims of Fluttershy’s Lament. We’d need to totally occupy and decontaminate this whole area, to ever make use of its water.”

“So, no sharing then...” I said, amazed at their rigidity.

“No sharing,” he said.

“Then why,” started the soldier in armor, and I almost laughed to hear him asking a question too now. “Why aren’t we here in fuller force? Just a second contingent would get this over with, I’d think.”

“Because, my friend, this is all just a game. A pet project for a few sore losers in the Crop-duster’s secession: like our C.O. Cloudside, we have water in excess. Peirene is on nobody’s radar politically. We aren’t even outfitted with plasma weaponry for Celestia’s sake. We’re nonessential personnel here. And guess what: if the free pegasi were really so free, even they would just fly somewhere else. I mean, why not? Couldn’t they worship their ministers anywhere? But no: both sides, I think, enjoy the fighting here - don’t you know that’s why most arguments drag on, when it would really be smarter just to call it quits?”

“Well this has been hugely enlightening,” I said, now quite excited to move on.

This was the first time I had not asked him a question, and it seemed to make the hazmat-suit stallion blink and reconsider me. “Say,” he started. “Who are you anyway?”

“Oh,” I said, moving to leave. “Just an impartial observer.”

I was fortunate the two of them continued the conversation (turned argument now in fact, as the solider in armor started to defend the motivations of their C.O.) instead of barring my entry into town until I’d answered some more questions. I assumed that was their usual function, there at the gate. It seemed natural they should want to know who was coming and going, and I wondered what I would have said if pressed. Would it have been as dishonest to withhold information from them?

The rising, squiggly path ahead was of mossy cobbles, and felt pleasant underhoof. The sound of the falls dropped off as I climbed, and soon I could hear the cheerful sound of other ponies’ steps and voices. The town itself was thickly ladled with mist, and difficult for me to understand. The stone houses didn’t advertise their contents or function at all, so I had to guess at what was hidden behind each inviting arch, glowing there. One structure close to me now could well have contained either a shrine of some kind, a store, a soldier's garrison, a bathhouse, or even a private residence. And I declined to walk in, based just on that information.

Not that it was so bad being in the street. The mist gave me a feeling of anonymity, so I stood for a while watching as wonderful new kinds of faces passed around me. With splotchy noses, freckles, and coarse, sandy hair. Good advertisement for life on the Shy: these visiting pilgrims’ apparent health and gladness. Most of the ponies were dressed in plain sackcloth, and seemed quite content, passing in pairs or small, excited groups. Of course, off to either side on roofs and terraces here and there I noticed more grimly outfitted soldiers. Seeing one fly over to relieve a second from her post, I gathered that the Enclave had a heavier presence on the other side of town, across the falls: much less easily accessible to us non-pegasi.

I soon came across a little mare with endearing, froggy eyes and a sackcloth hood on, kneeling down on all fours beneath a clear view of the misty falls. Under her breath, she was saying: “She’s been so good to us. She’s still so innocent. Forgive us for the pain we cause her daily, in return. Ungrateful as we are...”

I listened, standing by in shared appreciation of the falls. The violent water made me think: if I truly felt the pain of those around me - if I had a heart as deeply feeling and compassionate as Fluttershy’s, would I be able to bear it? Or would I be crushed as quickly as if I fell under the falls?

It was too bad such appreciative thoughts of her should be interrupted. But in that very instant the air pressure seemed to drop, and I heard a kind of thud from far above me. Hoods fell back from heads as the ponies in the street looked up. Then from a soldier’s squawky, radio-filtered voice, I heard a shout.

It happened quickly: shedding first light on the town, the mist overhead was blasted clear to reveal heights beyond heights of blank blue sky, suspended there. What came from this gap, or what had created the gap, was a small, diving pegasus, growing larger fast - while behind her, the mist quickly gathered and closed again

When the diving pegasus seemed about to hit the ground (and assuredly to die on impact, at such a speed), she pulled somehow out of her dive, ruffled all our clothes as she passed, and swept up again into the mist. Like wind given a body. I heard gunfire from on one of the houses next, as two soldiers took up the hopeless task of targeting her. In the street we pedestrians stood by slack-jawed, waiting, even under the rattling gunfire, like this was just an air show. Then, as if to reward our patience, she came again.

Seeming to come straight down like a bolt, she landed in the street, as we all braced ourselves too late. I felt small pieces of dirt sting my face. I had at least covered my eyes, so I got only a glimpse of her then. She was a foggy-white mare padded with about as little armor as a kid skateboarder would wear. However, at her side she carried a heinous, elephant gun-sized gauss rifle. And in her teeth, hanging from a strap, was one of those bug-eyed soldier’s helmets.

She let the helmet fall, and when it hit the ground some kind of black ichor sloshed out of it and started to stain the earth. “Presenting: Lieutenant Firing Line!” shouted the mare, sarcastically I think. “Killed in the service of his country.” I had been slow to understand: there was a pony’s head in there.

Now a rifle fired from on a roof: one of the other soldiers, taking a hasty potshot at the mare. In a skip she turned his way and with a deep-toned thud that reduced my guts to jelly, returned fire with her gauss rifle.

She winced with pain as well, as her joints suffered the brunt of its recoil. The shot meanwhile hit the stone rim of the roof, and cracked it neatly. Still the structure had absorbed the shot, and I could only assume the offending soldier was behind there wetting his suit or sending up thanks to heaven, or both.

In the startled wake of that last shot she fired, the mare had set off running downhill, then spread her wings and taken off. She flew so quietly then. Almost slowly, but banking sideways in a steep way, which caused the soldiers' scattered rifle fire to buzz harmlessly past her, just shy of the mark. Once she’d vanished into the sheets of mist again, I looked aside to the little prayerful mare I’d been appreciating the falls with, moments before.

We met startled eyes, and nervously, I couldn’t help laughing as I asked: “What just happened?”

“I guess she does that now and then,” said the little mare. “I don’t know her name – I’m not sure who here would. It’s sort of a black joke that she catches the soldiers alone when they go out to the latrine. They’ve nicknamed her Nature’s Call.”

I laughed again, in disbelief. “This has been the wildest day of my life,” I said. Then, looking up into the ever-changing mist I felt I had to add: “So far...”

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Scout: Amount of viewable map increased. You also seem to do quite well anticipating what a pony’s behavior in the moment reveals of the larger landscape of their character.