A light rain was falling over Fluttershy’s Lament, as Wile and I returned to the town at a quick trot. I cast a dim light at our hooves, to keep us from tripping in the dark. Wile did just fine; I clipped my hooves a few times, distracted. I’d never felt the velvety rain on my face. I’d never run so steeply uphill, or covered so much ground in darkness. And all this while, from on the rooftops, bulging yellow bug-eyes watched us pass with perfect night vision. I even heard a low, muffled laugh the next time I stumbled in the street.

“You’re being a very good sport,” said Wile, hearing me trip behind her, or maybe seeing the light I was casting fail briefly underhoof. “Just bear with me a little longer,” she said. “And I promise I’ll explain.”

I nodded. We had left the riverbank without discussion, and I’d followed her this far. I didn’t mind at all: in fact, I felt exhilarated. The crash of the falls, the wetness of the rain, the darkness all around: so much did these fill my senses, that I felt as if I was somehow part of them. On their wave, I guess I mean, carried forward with their same momentum. Slow and clumsy as I was, I felt fast, as Rainbow Dash must have liked to feel. This, in much higher degrees, must be the feeling she had spent her life pursuing. To feel as if you were no longer confined, but free, and a part of the greater momentum of all created things.

Wile more or less had to grab me, to keep me from continuing out onto the narrow, misty bridge that linked the two sides of Fluttershy’s Lament, crossing in front of the falls. I could imagine going pounding hard across it, driving against the damp shrouds mist. Then again, I could imagine taking off in graceful flight; but that didn’t mean I could do it. In fact, as soon as Wile stopped me, I realized I was now painfully out of breath, and my four hooves were aching, and the rain was stinging in my eyes. In fact, I didn’t feel I could run a leg further at all. I guess this must have been my first experience of real adrenaline, and the crash after the fact.

“We won’t need the light for now, Lemony,” Wile said, gently. So, I stopped casting it across the ground. She said: “Our friend should be just about to cross.” I nodded, still out of breath; with no clear idea of what she was talking about, or of what we were doing hiding close to each other in a crop of small mushrooms.

“We’ve been suspicious for some time about this stallion,” said Wile, in a soft voice that tickled my ears on the “s” sounds. “Someone’s been feeding information to the Enclave, that much we knew for sure. I’ve just been trying to find out who. See, there’s a small group of earth ponies and unicorns here, in town, acting secretly in support of the free pegasi. I’m one of them. Our friend was supposed to be another.”

“So, you think he’s the informant?” I asked. The fish she had been waiting to catch, I now understood.

“Well, we’re about to find that out,” she said. “We’ll just take a quick look and let him pass for now. Later we can confront him, in his room. If he is who I think he is, then I’ll know where to find him. More than this we can’t risk, out on the street.”

“Are you worried about the soldie-“

“Sorry to shush you, honey, but here he comes. Keep your head down!”

She didn’t need to worry about our being spotted. The stallion had a hood drawn over his head, slicked with rain, and moved past us at a hurried pace. To him we were just another mound in the darkness, that is if his eye glanced our way at all. I meanwhile was quite comfortable as we waited, next to Wile. A little longer and I could have slept.

“Well, that was the colt!” Wile said. “A slippery character. His name’s Peanut Gallery.”

“Are these your real names?” I asked, frowning. “Or just made up?”

“Well,” she said. “Aren’t all names made up?”

I couldn’t really argue with her there, and neither did I have the chance, for peering over the mushrooms at us next were two surprising, egg-shaped yellow eyes. They made us jump, the eyes, set wide on a freakish black mask, strangely bumpy all over with black beads of rain. A soldier’s helmet.

“Still busy at your prayers, little ponies?” he said, out of his mask’s filter. “Strange place for it.”

“And strange proximity, too,” said Wile, quickly. “I ask you man: what does it look like we’re doing? Or have you been a soldier so long that you can’t remember?” I was startled at her tone. She sounded more as if she wanted to start some kind of trouble with him, but I guessed the idea was to throw him off.

And it seemed to work. “... Say that again?” he said.

“You know, this is just what it looks like, man: what young lovers do. What, just because we’re two mares you think we can’t?” The soldier looked at me, then her. “Well, so what if we couldn’t?” Wile asked. “Who’s to stop us trying! You?”

“I...” he said. It seemed that with precision, Wile had struck at a part of him that predated his soldier’s uniform, that had been there since he was a colt: a part that wondered at the natural mysteries of little fillies, and was embarrassed and afraid. “I don’t know,” the soldier said, with who knows what kinds of mental pictures in mind, worrying him. “All I know is you should be inside. In fact, that’s an order! Go on!”

“Oh, I see,” Wile said, and stood. “So be it.” Now with a formal gesture, she offered to help me up. “Well, what do you say, my dear: your place or mine?”

Of course I knew it was just pretend, but still: I did look shyly at the ground as Wile led me away.

We soon came to a kind of inn, whose front room was dim and squat, with chairs turned over on tables and an unmanned bar. A staircase in the corner led to the second floor. The stone walled room had a mysterious cool, blue light to it which I admired, and tried to commit to memory. It was quiet. I guessed there wasn’t much call for late night drinking and carousing in Fluttershy’s Lament, with it being for the most part a town of early-rising soldiers and pilgrims, who at the first blush of dawn (just a few hours from now) would already be committed to their drills and prayers.

“Let’s give him a few minutes to dry off,” Wile said, going around behind the bar to take a look at the bottles there, arranged in rows. “Peanut Gallery’s room is just upstairs.”

As I sat down in front of the bar, I noticed that where my tail swept the floor behind me, it cleared off a swath of dust. “Why give him time to dry off?” I asked, sweeping my tail the other way.

“I’m of the opinion,” said Wile. “That you should always give ponies an opportunity to tell the truth. Say we barged in on him still wet from the rain. Well, he couldn’t confess at that point could he? We’d already have caught him. But say instead we go in and he’s nice and dry, ready for bed, well then it wouldn’t be so obvious. And he’ll have a choice: should I lie to them, or tell the truth?” She paused for a moment, then added: “If nothing else, it just helps show us how much of a rotten egg he really is.”

“What kind of information is he passing to the Enclave?” I asked.

“Well, that depends on him. It could be softer stuff, like which of us ponies in town support the free pegasi. Or more timely information, like our latest arrangements to get food and ammunition to their fighters. Or if he’s truly heartless: the recent hiding places of certain pegasi families...”

“Wile?” We both turned at the uncertain little voice. On the stairs into the room was the darkened form of a slight, silvery haired mare, peeking down. Little more than a shadow on the stair. “It’s you, Wile, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Bottles,” said Wile. “It’s only me.” Then, to me, she mouthed: the innkeeper.

“Oh, good. That’s good.” Her little shadow started to retreat from off the stair. “Good night, then.”

“Bottles?” Wile said, and the shadow hesitated. “Quick question for you, before you go: have you noticed any of your guests coming and going, late at night? Oh, say at around this time...”

“Well, yes,” the mare answered, after a pause. “Once or twice a week. Peanut Gallery goes out for a while. But I think that’s more his business than mine. Good night.”

“Wait a minute, Bottles.” Wile stopped her, again just in time. “Any idea where he goes?” Silence first at this, from on the stairs. “Come on, Bottles, if you can’t tell me: who can you tell?”

“Well I asked him once, and he got frustrated at me,” she admitted. “He’d been to see Keats, he said.”

“Keats?” said Wile. “That’s what he told you? Now that’s very interesting, Bottles, thank you. Thanks very much.” The shadow hung there on the stairs for a moment. “Good night,” said Wile.

“Good night, Wile.”

“She’s the innkeeper?” I asked, after her shadow was gone. It seemed doubtful somehow. She’d been such a small, sylph-figured creature. I felt like sweeping the floor of the room for her, just to take care of her a little.

“She inherited this place from her father,” said Wile. “He had more of a, well, commanding presence. Sad story, really. An Enclave soldier bumped him off one night under unclear circumstances. Still not sure why. But since then Bottles has been a great help to us. You wouldn’t know it, but she’s a brave little mare.”

“And who’s Keats?” I asked.

“I’ll take you to meet him, soon,” Wile said. “We’re all of us like little foals playing a game, compared to him. He’s the reason the free pegasi have lasted so long here. Him and the mist. He’s a really clear old pegasus. Clear, I mean, in his thinking. Very few of us actually ever get to meet with him, though.”

She paused to think. “I mean, I know where to find him. A few others do too, but I doubt Peanut Gallery is one of them.” She tapped her hoof a few times on the counter of the bar, thinking. “In fact, I’m sure he doesn’t know. But then, since we’re here: why don’t we just get it from the horse’s mouth?”

Peanut Gallery’s little stonewalled room, not much more than a closet, was bare, without even sheets on the bed. “What the hay-“ Wile said, after we had searched the room for clues, without results. Next, she led us back down the passage, to the slightly open door of Bottles’ much larger apartment.

Her rooms instead were wood-paneled and spacious, with molded wooden rafters overhead, a few framed needlework pictures, a little kitchenette with gourds and turnips on a coarse wooden table all scarred from daily chopping, and two rounded windows that let in a blue light (if light’s not too strong a word, for this vague aura in the room). We found Bottles asleep on a dry bale of hay, discarded in the corner nearest the front door. It seemed her actual bedroom, however, was further into the apartment.

Not disturbing Bottles but pressing forward, we found Peanut Gallery standing there beside a girlish bed. The hood of his cloak had fallen back. He was slight for a stallion, somewhat girlish himself, with a head of dark, damp hair that fell partly over his eyes as he looked our way. It seemed he had been busy unpacking a saddlebag. “Wile,” he said, greeting her. Quite calmly, I thought. “Who’s your friend?”

“I don’t think I’ll bother introducing you,” Wile said, with a high degree of contempt clear in her voice. “Why is Bottles sleeping on a bale of hay in the next room?” she asked.

“She’s been doing my housekeeping for me, while I stay here,” he said. “She understands my work is quite important, and generously offered me her rooms.”

“Your work?” Wile said.

“Spying,” he said, and left a pause seemingly just to tease her, before clarifying: “On the Enclave. Under the guise, of course, of being an informant working for their side.”

“Then you admit you’ve been passing them information.”

“A little throwaway information, yes, to get myself into their good graces. And no, before you ask, Keats doesn’t know about this yet. The old pegasus isn’t very cunning, with all respect. So, this has all been my own ingenuity.“

“And what do you have to show for it?” Wile asked.

“The Enclave’s trust,” he said. “The abuse of which will gain me precious information, in time. I don’t know about you, Wile, but I intend to excel in this little organization of ours. I can see that, for whatever reason, Keats prefers you for now. But even he can’t argue with results.”

“This is very convenient,” Wile said. “So yes, you’re an informant, but it’s only to help us in the long run? Just what you’d tell me, I think, if you were working for their side, and I’d caught you.” Wile looked back at me then, and in a softer voice asked: “What’s your first instinct tell you, Lemony?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Just the gall of him taking over these rooms makes me think it’s the truth. He’s not being very discreet. And he does sound jealous that this Keats pony prefers you.”

“So, just an ill-advised attempt to impress Keats?” she nodded. “That does have the ring of truth.”

“And what about it is so ill-advised?” he asked, stiffening.

“Well, it’s a safe bet that Keats had already considered this idea of an undercover informant, and decided against it. And if it seems like a bad idea to Keats, I call it ill-advised.”

“Perhaps you’re just mad about wasting all those evenings on the riverbank,” he said, as a jibe.

“Oh no: I got some very good fishing done there,” Wile said. “I didn’t catch any fish, granted, but it was very good fishing. I enjoyed myself. Oh, and of course it’s where me and Lemony met.”

“Wonderful,” he said, dryly. “Are we done here?”

“Just about,” Wile said. “But I am going to take the liberty of searching your saddlebag, to see if this all checks out. And I will have to raise this all with Keats of course, to see what he thinks.”

“It might profit you to think for yourself sometime,” he said, as Wile moved past him.

I found myself nodding at this – not because I agreed with his sentiment, but because it so neatly seemed to sum up the stallion’s attitude. I was interested in him. His first priority really did seem to be his own profit and advancement. Another pony in his position, undertaking the same inspired mission – to ingratiate themselves with the Enclave, and to gain information of possible use to the free pegasi – well, another pony in the same position might have seemed selfless and daring. This buck, however, did not seem selfless or daring, though he was taking the same risk. But wasn’t he being courageous?

The bravest of the ministers, Rainbow Dash, had not been called the element of daring courage. Why? I assumed it was because, so often when she was brave - when she performed a daring trick or laughed at danger - there was arrogance involved. Her own high opinion of herself had given her misplaced courage. And this was not her virtue. Meanwhile instead, whenever she had acted bravely to save a friend, it was not done out of this high opinion of herself – not to impress anyone or pridefully take on the risk involved – but purely to save a friend. Out of loyalty alone. The form of courageous love she best expressed.

All of the ministers had been courageous, but courageous toward a good cause: toward telling the truth, and toward being positive in the face of pain, which took great courage. Toward being kind, always, and toward giving without the guarantee of gratitude in return. What instead was courage put toward a selfish, loveless cause? Selfish giving. Selfish laughter. Then, was what mattered most not what we each chose to do, but the amount of motivating love behind our choices? Now, Wile seemed to confirm this for me, as she performed a lower, less admirable act – threatening violence – out of higher, more admirable love.

“I think we’re about done here,” she said, having found nothing incriminating in Peanut Gallery’s saddlebag. “Of course, however much you say you need the extra space, and however convenient it’s been for you, exploiting her good nature, I am going to have to ask you to move out of Bottles’ apartment...”

“Oh?” the stallion asked, amused.

“I mean, if you like your pelvis in one piece.”

“Oh.”

Bottles woke up in the commotion of Peanut Gallery packing up his things, and immediately moved to make us all tea. She had a little teapot and set of flowery ceramic cups that, given their delicacy, and the indelicacy of most of the modern world, must have held inestimable value now. Peanut Gallery’s tea sat going cold on the windowsill. Wile and I lounged around the apartment, waiting for him to leave, while Bottles insisted on puttering back and forth, tidying up, or offering to fill our cups again. She gave us soft white biscuits with ginger marmalade on them, the likes of which I’d never tasted, and which I chewed on in grateful awe. In fact, Bottles’ cutie mark was a little jar of marmalade with a checkered cloth over its lid.

Now, I haven’t mentioned cutie marks at all thus far, and it’s because of the attitude taken towards them in the Stable. Maybe it was the Princesses (or whatever force governs cutie marks) urging us to open the doors and emerge into Peirene, but more often than not the cutie marks that appeared on the Stable's little foals were painfully inappropriate, given the setting. Gardening cutie marks. Animal related marks. Cutie marks of foods no longer accessible (oh the yearning even a simple, earthy turnip on a flank could cause). Weather-related marks and so on. And because of this awkward, sort of painful contrast, we were warned as foals not to refer too much to our flanks to find out more about ourselves or our calling in life.

In retrospect, I took these more natural, outdoorsy cutie marks as supporting evidence that Shady Sands was right: and that our opening the Stable doors was long overdue. We were being called outside, weren’t we? And we ignored the call. Still, it was a part of how we were all raised, and the end result was that even now, I didn’t usually make note of the little picture on other ponies’ flanks.

I had been part of a fortunate minority whose cutie marks (mine, the numerals 1:1) were actually relevant to what we studied. 1:1 referred to the first line of Twilight Sparkle’s holy account of creation, as dictated to her by Princess Celestia. An ancient account, on which there are many variations, but which usually starts with: In the beginning, there was light (1:1). For it is said light is the oldest form of magic.

I was glad to be a part of this tradition, and I guess my cutie mark had given me, compared to some of my peers, a certain sense of purpose of confidence that I took for granted.

All this to say I suddenly became more interested, sitting there in Bottles’ apartment, in the cutie marks of the ponies around me. Peanut Gallery’s was a pendulum clock, which required some thought. Was he always on time – did he always act at the most opportune moment? Was he just good at repairing pendulum clocks? I didn’t know him well enough to guess. Wile’s cutie mark meanwhile was a compass, which I had noticed much earlier of course, but never considered as a mark of her natural talents. Still it made some sense to me. It was easy to think of her as always knowing where to go.

I wasn’t sure whether all this argued for or against the old idea that a pony’s cutie mark really expressed the spirit of their talents, or whether it was better, like in the Stable, to deny the mark and let a pony choose her own way. But what I came away with most from these considerations, was that we were all four of us ponies here, with some kind of guiding force behind our lives, which none of us understood.

Our all being alive felt like part of the same mystery, and while I couldn’t presume to know how or why we were created, I did know I was glad to be there. And glad not to be alone. I felt fond of the other ponies in the room, even Peanut Gallery. As if we were close relatives, at a small reunion there. Of course, we were relatives – distant, distant relatives, but relatives all the same. Family. And that natural fact made me happy just to think of: as happy as the taste of the marmalade.

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Empathy: Reaction levels are shown when in an in-depth conversation.