That the soldier’s disembodied head was still hidden in its helmet spared me some discomfort. At the same time, it thrilled me to see it there. I wasn’t glad that a life had ended, of course. That didn’t thrill me. It was just that now I knew, without a doubt: I was in much wilder country, far outside the safe enclosure of our Stable. Now I could see: we had not been free individuals there, but more like animals on a farm. All a part of the farm. This instead was what a free individual could do, unconstrained. What Nature’s Call had done. Acting for her own sake, out of her own mysterious volition, which no one else understood. Wilder than the violent falls, was such a violent pony’s will in action: what I had seen her choose to do.

I felt so inhibited and passive. What would Nature’s Call have done under the same circumstances as me, in the Stable? Gone on a massacre, I guessed! And while I knew this was not a solution, some element of it still seemed like an inspiration to me. As if there was a lesson there. Not in the act of massacre itself but in the fact that, if Nature’s Call had felt it needed to be done, she would have done it. While I felt more like a pawn, whose nature it was to move one square at a time. Yes, that was it. If I were to see what I wanted, would I pursue it? And if so, how fast? In contrast, what would she do, and how fast - Nature’s Call?

It was her full commitment I admired. It didn’t have to be a massacre. Or a violent murder. It could be just the opposite: an act of love for instance, undertaken with as much commitment as her show of violence was. Now: when I said I moved one square at a time, how did I know that? What did I think of? Just this: as much as I’d wanted to, had I ever once told Shady Sands how I felt about her? It seemed like I had, because she must have known, but had I told her? Had I communicated it, so that she would forever understand, in no uncertain terms?

No. I had left it unsaid. Much unsaid, and much undone. That was more obvious now that we’d run out of time. I had been shy, and only shown her my pining heart in half measures. I’d played pointless games even, pretending I didn’t notice when she entered a room, when in fact each room she entered seemed to rearrange itself, in relation to her. Shouldn’t she have heard this from me? It didn’t matter what I stood to gain from telling her. Or if she approved or not. The point was it was the truth, and I suffered unnaturally in concealing it. And she’d known all the same: if not from me, then from this nervous, unnatural behavior of mine.

All this to say I didn’t admire Nature’s Call for what she'd done, but for her lack of hesitation, because I seemed to have spent every day of my life thus far hesitating. Not quite coming through in time, before the window of opportunity closed. Meaning that the next day was the same. And the next. And I felt that if I could only do it – jump through in time! – then all my days to come would be immediately changed.

I was in too murky a mood then to realize that I had, just this morning, almost literally done this, and that I could easily have hesitated instead at the Stable door, letting it close on me, and once again leaving all my days to come unchanged. But as I say my mood was murky, and I was starting to feel unwell.

Until now I had paid no attention to the commotion and gossip in town around me, or even to the armed soldiers taking flight in careful pursuit of Nature’s Call. I looked around and was sad to find my sense of engagement gone. I would have to take a rest somewhere, until I felt less distracted. I decided to walk down to the bank of the river below. The shadowy bank, where earlier I’d seen tall mushrooms growing. It had some kind of natural attraction to me, in the mood I was in.

I went there for comfort, and found it. By the light of late afternoon, I arrived on the riverbank; given shade under the fantastic mushrooms, whose curved stalks supported undersides all grooved, soft and elastic. And I wasn’t alone there. I could see a short-haired mare close to the water, sitting in an unusual way. On her flanks, leaned forward. She had a little reed in her mouth, and a fishing line in the water. The mist was turning shades of orange (a color I had never seen in such variety), and the fishing mare was silhouetted against the hazy impact of the falls. This view in front of me looked like a full-page advertisement in a magazine, and for a while I stood there admiring it.

It was no lifeless picture, however, and soon the mare had turned her head to look at me. At this, I panicked and turned too, so that I now stood perpendicular to her on the bank, unnaturally stiff, trying to look as neutral as a cow in its pasture, even un-focusing my eyes.

“Hello?” the mare called over, in an amused voice. “Looking for something?” I glanced back at her. “You can come out of the shade, if you want,” she said. “You look like a little fawn on the forest’s edge, there.”

So, I trotted over. The mare had wispy, combed back red hair, and her coat was about the same color as the sand lower down the bank. “There you are,” she said. “Have a seat?” She had some blankets folded beside her. Quite a bit of useful equipment, in fact, as if she meant to camp there on the bank overnight. She was an earth pony. “Glad to meet you,” she said. “I’m Wile. As in wile away the time.”

“Lemony Cream,” I said, sitting down on my legs, low to the ground. “Are you not staying in town?”

“Under the Enclave’s supervision?” she said. “No thanks. I like it around here, of course. The white noise capital of the wasteland, I think of it as, with these falls. It’s just the soldiers I don’t like: always keeping watch. I guess I prefer to move unseen.” She smiled. “Same as you, hm?”

“Oh, back there?” I said, embarrassed. “I was just surprised. I was looking at you and I guess I forgot, somehow, that you could just as easily look back at me.”

“You must have been doing some thinking,” she said.

“I guess I was,” said I. “How did you know?”

“Well, I assume you usually are – thinking, that is. I know I am. Naturally, I’m a very deep thinker.” She made a brief, funny face: wrinkling her nose and crossing her eyes, as if in brainy concentration. I noticed that she had a few faint white freckles dotting her snout. “But in all seriousness,” she said. “I’ve started to suspect it’s the source of most of our misery, as ponies. Overthinking.”

“You might be onto something,” I said, on the basis of recent experience.

“I just know that sometimes I’m sitting here really fishing and other times I’m sitting here thinking, with a fishing rod. And I know I prefer to just fish.” She shook her head. “Still, thoughts keep cropping up unasked for, demanding attention. Telling me, usually for the worse, how I should feel: and why? Based on what? If you can ever just get clear, it’s a great feeling.”

I knew what she meant. Just to be a pony sitting there, on the bank of a river. Instead of a pony busily thinking, and furrowing her brow, and being only half there. Attending to what? What was so urgent that I shouldn’t be here, fully? A silence followed, as we both made a sincere effort to be present. To really arrive on the riverbank. I rested my head on my hooves. She cast her line again, into the water.

The mist had beaded the very fibers of Wile’s blankets with dew; froth was being carried over the river’s surface in continuous swirls and eddies. Wild new patterns all the time. On the far shore, I could see the distant glow of arches: more of Fluttershy’s Lament. On our shore, I saw the nearest mushroom’s great, round shadow rock forward an inch over the sand, then back, as the mushroom itself swayed gently on its stalk. I paid close, steady attention to all of this. As if I was reading a book.

Such peaceful attention, and so much like reading in my old room, that I before long I’d fallen asleep.

I dreamt I was looking for someone. And that out of crowds of ponies much larger than me, I knew she was the only one my size. More than that, I don’t remember. I came to shortly, drooling into Wile’s blanket under the glow of evening. This was the first time I’d taken a proper nap, that is: by the true light and sticky heat of day. In the Stable instead, it had been easy to shut my door and simulate night at any hour. My only job there had been to participate in the evening chapel services, providing light. So, after Twilight’s example, I’d often spent the night studying magic, and slept into the afternoon.

Well, what I called studying magic was reading any book where light was described, which gave me a lot of wiggle room. Ideally, it would have been poetry all the time (for the easiest way to conjure light, I’d found, was to think of a single happy line of poetry, along with whatever happy associations it brought to mind). Still, more often than poetry, I had read stories of Ponyville. Or even, on good nights, Twilight’s letters. And these had been the whole basis of my religious feeling. Much more so than any chapel service.

“You’re awake,” said Wile, noticing my eyes were open. “Good: I was just wondering something.” I sat up, preparing to answer. “Now,” she said. “If this is inappropriate at all, remember: it’s just bad timing, that’s all. You happened to wake up while my thoughts were tending in this direction.” She sounded different. A bottle with a black label sat close beside her. “If you’d woken up a bit earlier: maybe I’d have asked you about... the local economy. A little later, then maybe uh... high literature. As it is, though, I just thought it would be funny to ask... well, funny to ask if you had ever been caught, you know, clopping.”

“Ah!” I actually yelled, so much had that surprised me.

“Oh relax, it’s all a part of the... what do you call it? You know, the natural life cycle.”

“Is it?” I asked, still half-recoiled.

“Here.” She passed me the bottle with the black label. “This will set you more at ease, I think. Commit yourself to that for a while, whilst I give you my answer.”

“But – I didn’t ask. . .”

“The answer is yes, I have been caught in the act. Long ago,” she said. “and far away, when I was a little mare just come of age, that is, in the eyes of the court...”

Oh, how she went into detail. She seemed to pursue every tangent, and I couldn’t just sit there and nod. So, while she spoke, I started to take drinks from the bottle. Its black label said bourbon, and if I describe it as hard that should get across how it felt each time, slamming into me. It stung the back passages of my nose with fumes, and my throat with what felt like liquid fire. Still, with each wincing drink I seemed to become more and more interested in her story.

Well, not interested in the story itself. Of that I had lost the thread almost as soon as she started. What I was more interested in now were the natural cadences of her voice. It sounded like poetry to me, in my condition, when she said: “Like a little foal I felt, with my head lying in her lap.” Like a little foal I felt, with my head lying in her lap. And whenever Wile laughed, so did I. Not at what she said, which I still couldn’t follow, but more like an infant laughs: surprised at a suddenly changing face.

All this time too, to make it even better, Wile was framed by the crashing falls, which seemed to be landing right on my head and blasting all previous unhappiness away, or smoothing out unhappiness’ hard rocks. Getting some kind of edge off: which to most adults, is the well-known effect of alcohol.

“See, because it was winter,” Wile continued. “And because the wall of the seminary had collapsed on that side, it was cold, and so my breath was steaming up the whole time I did it. More and more heavily, in fact, steaming up. And only afterwards did I realize: that’s how the Mother Superior had known I was there.”

“Wile!” I said, urgently. “That’s just what happened to me!”

“What, in the same seminary?”

“In the same seminary, Wile?” I repeated, laughing. “No, Wile. I mean in my room. They found out too - when I would do it, you know. Clop. Whenever I did it my horn would light up!” We both broke up laughing at this. “And Wile, guess what?” I said. “Ponies could see the light under the door! And in the slats of the vents. I was accidentally casting spells all the time. I had to tell them I was practicing, Wile!”

“Wait, listen to this,” she said. “Listen: in a way you were!”

“What!” I said. “In a way I was, Wile? Practicing? Wile, that’s too much!”

The rest of that conversation starts to get vague, but I do know that, much in the same way, she and I continued to get along like a pair of mules.

Night had fallen, and still Wile had caught no fish at all. Somewhere in the next hour of our reeling and singing (“a beautiful bride, a handsome groom, two hearts...”), she somehow prepared us some coffee and pancakes – to sponge up some of the bourbon, I think she said. And I did start to feel steadier, eating the pancakes. Less like I was on such a high and crazy flight (which, little did I know, could have ended in a lot of sickness and retching unless carefully managed). It seemed Wile was well supplied there, with a gas stove and kettle, but still we had to share her one plate, which told me a little about her usual habits. I wondered why someone as fun and social as she seemed, chose to live alone.

“I tend to travel,” she told me, when I tried to get at an answer. “I’m from mid-country, originally. You could even see an uninspiring view of Canterlot, from where I was born. But it’s ruthless down there. This might sound unfeeling, but I think the problem in the south is that too many ponies survived. Too many cities and Stables. Now, too much competition. Slavers, road gangs, cults, etcetera. The Shy is fortunate, as its based more on small households and farms – strong families, looking after their own land. Not that there isn’t thievery and violent argument, and even indentured labor in places. About as bad as Equestria pre-founding, I’d say. Still, as long as the winters discourage other southerners from staying, we’ll do fine.”

To me so far it had felt like summer, at least as I’d heard summer described. I asked: “It gets very cold here?”

“That’s the big secret,” she said. “Not in Peirene. I guess these clouds must shelter it, somehow. Or there’s some ancient countermeasure in place, weather-wise. Call it pegasus ingenuity. The point is: somehow, it’s never much less pleasant here than autumn in the Shy. In fact, it should be about mid-autumn down there now, and yet you wouldn’t know it here.”

“So, you usually come and go?” I asked.

“Usually,” she said. “You could say I winter here in Peirene. You know, like a goose. But this time, accidentally, I’ve sort of gotten invested in the free pegasi’s plight. It’s been easy to ignore, as you don’t see much of them, but – well, let me just say I’m invested this time.”

“I talked to some Enclave soldiers about it,” I said. “They seemed to just want to go home.”

“Of course.” Wile nodded. “I’m sure it’s quite comfortable there. But I myself would rather be on the surface, and free. To worship whoever I want, if ever I should be converted. To have as many children as I want. Again, if ever I’m converted.” She laughed. “To work no job: to pay no taxes. To be an earth pony, of course. And to meet unicorns...”

“I didn’t think of that,” I said. “Of course, above the clouds it must be a world of only pegasi...” This felt as far off and obscure to me as some ecosystem of the sea. And like schools of fish, I pictured the pegasi gliding playfully around pink reefs of cloud. But of course, under the Enclave they were not as wild or as free as that. It would have disappointed me to know how much time they spent indoors, in their offices.

“I guess this is why the idea of a free Peirene has started to matter to me,” Wile said. “Here around us is a defensible position, with lots of drinkable water, where all three kinds of ponies could learn with time to coexist again. Just to practice, on a small scale at first. I’m not very politically minded, but even I can see that Equestria only succeeded for so long on the strength of the same arrangement. With earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi. Yes, after that it grew and grew and came to the Great War in the end, but all the same: I’d take another few thousand years of peace and community first. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “And actually, as someone who prays - I mean, who really believes that the Princesses and their ministers still have a presence in our lives, that’s just what seems most important – what you said: the small scale. Any true friendship, even between two or three ponies – well, I think that’s actually the highest offering we can make. Our greatest service to them is just to love each other, and-“

“I’m so sorry,” Wile said, interrupting me brutally, as she started to fumble around in the near darkness. While I was speaking, she seemed to have caught sight of something across the water.

She stopped digging around: she had found what she wanted. A small pair of binoculars. Comically small: the opera house gallery kind. “I really am sorry,” she said. “I’ve been on this riverbank night after night. And I never expected... Well, that it should happen now of all times!’

She turned from me, studying the opposite side of the river, where a few houses' ghostly doorways stood out against the mist. The other half of Fluttershy’s Lament, which I’d assumed had a heavier Enclave presence. Without the binoculars, I watched, and could just make out a figure in one of the lighted doorways. A stallion, maybe. He slipped carefully away into the dark, with his head down.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“My fish,” Wile said, and started eagerly to collect her things. “Come on, I’ll explain later: let’s go get him!”

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: In the Hush of Evening: With negligible effort you can cast an ambient lighting effect that simulates evening, resulting in a 30% reduction in darkness level. Further reduction demands greater concentration on your part.