Daemeon withdrew his hand from the mare’s chest and rested it on his leg. He bent forward and sighed, staring up the altar all lit up in glory. It glowed a brilliant white with a cloth draped over the length of it. Four large candles stood at each of its corners, extinguished in the absence of a mass. In the center of an otherwise glorious structure, they stood empty and somewhat insignificant. The simplicity of the altar reflected the simplicity of the rituals it was used for. Really, what more is necessary for breaking bread than a table to gather around?

As Daemeon mused over the simplicity of the center, he reached into the darkest corners of his mind, the places where he locked away the secrets he couldn’t forget. It was something he rarely did save to create conviction in himself when he felt weak. Never before had he opened those doors to relay their information to another living being. He was curious though. “I wonder what will happen if I tell her.” He frowned at the thought, “What can happen? She already hates me. And it’s not like she can leave me or anything. Still,” he thought with stern conviction, “she’ll have to learn eventually if she’s to pass on my education.”

He said in a sad voice, “It all started with my mother and her job.”

Colgate glanced down at the hourglass on her rump and asked, “What was her job?”

Daemeon stroked his shadow, not looking at the mare, and answered, “She gave people what they wanted instead of what they needed.”

“Oh!” Colgate smiled. “So, she was a whore?”

The handsome man grimaced at the statement, and his eyes fell to the floor. His pout was apparent to the mare as he answered, “Yes. She was a whore.”

Concerned, Colgate interjected, “Didn’t people like her? I know other ponies hate me because I have to give them what they need instead of what they want.”

Daemeon ran his fingers through his unkempt brown hair and said, “You’d be surprised.”

“So,” Colgate asked, crawling into Daemeon’s lap and laying with her hooves up, “what happened with her?”

“Well,” he explained, “as she did her work, she came into the company of many different men whom she gave her love to.”

Surprised, Colgate lifted her hooves to her mouth and whispered, “Oh, my.” The mare blushed right through her blue coat and asked, “Did she . . ?”

Daemeon nodded his head sadly and continued, “One day, she discovered that her carousing had gotten her pregnant.”

She poked his belly and asked softly, “With you?”

“Yes,” Daemeon answered simply. “She was older at the time, so there was some debate about keeping me. She had probably thought she was already barren when she had me. Her parents were out of her life, and she’d no clue who the father was. What’s more, what man would want to be father to a whore’s child?”

Colgate grimaced at the remark. She believed she was beginning to understand what Daemeon’s mother actually was. Thinking about it made her feel sick, so she asked, “So, you didn’t have a father?”

“Nope,” the man answered, shaking his head slowly. “It was a difficult pregnancy. She had to manage mostly on her own. As luck would have it though, her being a single mother with terrible job prospects pretty well took the anxiety of big medical bills off her shoulders. The state more or less covered them. And, since she had a kid, she qualified for welfare.”

Curious, the mare asked, “What’s welfare?”

Dameon rubbed a hand across his brow, annoyed that he had to explain what must be such foreign concepts to the unicorn and her fairy land. He gave his simplest explanation, “It’s a system where people who can’t work are given money by the state to live.”

Colgate nodded and said, “I think I understand, but why don’t the families of the people who can’t work take care of them? That’s how we do it in Equestria.”

“Mankind doesn’t have it quite as good I guess. There are so many of us that pretty much any situation that can occur does occur.”

“Like yours?”

“Yes.” Daemeon brought his arms around Colgate’s diminutive form in his lap and pulled her a little closer. He nodded his head and bit his lip before continuing, “At any rate, I was born to a mother who had crippling arthritis and no hopes left for a career. I’m not at all sure what she did with her life before that. I sometimes think she might have been married before, or that she had a good career before she lost it all and became a whore.” His eyes gradually carried back up to the simple altar and its candles. “But, most likely, she was probably a whore all her life.”

Colgate rolled on her side, facing away from Daemeon, and asked, “Was she nice?”

Daemeon lifted his hand and stroked the length of Colgate’s side. He paused the motion for a second over her ribs. The diminutive mare’s heart thudded softly with the rush of life. It was a small heart, and Daemeon could only feel it if he pressed his fingertips in the right spot. Still, it stood out as yet another reminder of the unicorn’s existence. At the feel of her heart, he couldn’t help but think, “This is nice.”

The silence lingered for a bit longer before Daemeon answered, “No. Not especially.”

Colgate turned her face to him in confusion and asked, “How wasn’t she?”

“Well,” Daemeon started, “she treated me as both a curse and a blessing. Since she had me, the welfare was easy to get. Free money poured in, and she was able to give up her life as a whore. Or, at least, she toned it down a bit. I wasn’t really aware of what she was until I was a bit older. She was even able to squeeze a little extra because she proved to the government that her arthritis was too bad for her to get a real job.” His head fell back on the pew, so he could gaze up at the massive vaulted ceiling above. With just a hint of ire, he finished, “She never had to work another hard day in her life.”

The little, blue mare frowned and pressed, “If that’s what was good, then what was bad? Why were you a curse?”

Daemeon grunted and crossed his legs onto the pew saying, “She traded one gig with another. She liked the prospect of free money, but she wasn’t all that thrilled about having to take care of me. Growing up, she used to call me Purgy because I was her penance for a bad life.” He cringed. “Isn’t that rich? She liked to think she was religious too. Liked to say the rosary from time to time. Though, I wonder if she actually knew the prayers. The woman was so dense it was altogether likely that she didn’t.”

Colgate twisted onto her back, sticking her four petite hooves in the air, and said in horror, “You sound like you hated your mother!”

Keeping his eyes to the ceiling, Daemeon shook his head and answered, “That’s where you’re wrong. I told you before that I don’t have hate in my heart. I might have disliked my mother a bit. At times, she even made me angry. But I never hated her.”

The mare frowned and responded, “You never did explain that to me.” With a heavy dose of sarcasm, she asked, “How, may I ask, did you learn to not hate things? You’re such a bitter ape, I was beginning to think you just hated everything.”

Daemeon gave up on the ceiling to flash an angry look at the little, blue unicorn, causing her to cringe slightly. He answered her, “I’m not as easy to judge as you might think.”

Colgate scowled back with equal intensity and countered, “Neither am I!”

Daemeon just shook his head and continued, “The reason I don’t hate anything is quite simple really. I don’t hate anything because I don’t love anything.”

Her scowl softened just a touch as she asked, “What do you mean?”

“As I said, it’s simple,” Daemeon responded in all seriousness. “If you think about it, any true hate you ever feel is a response to something you love being put in jeopardy. It’s not always so easy to recognize, but if you look at it logically, you can follow the steps. Just like you could figure out how the couch was white.” He cleared his throat and gestured to nothing in particular as he went on, “Think of any reason you could hate somebody. You could hate a person because he or she hurt you physically. Such hate is a clear reflection of self love, the most basic love anybody can feel. That person tried to harm what you love, and you retaliate with hate. Simple.”

The mare brought her hoof to her mouth thoughtfully and mused aloud, “I never looked at it like that. So, you didn’t hate your mother, but you also didn’t love her?”

“I,” Daemeon stuttered, looking away, “I didn’t say that either.”

An uncomfortable silence fell on the pair. The discomfort of the moment was only magnified in the deathly quiet of the massive cathedral. Daemeon avoided eye contact, but Colgate did not look away. She watched as moisture was again beading in Daemeon’s grey eyes, flashing a subtle twinkle in the light reflected off the altar. Colgate recognized the sadness in his eyes from the apartment. It seemed to her that the shadow of whatever had disturbed him there clung to him even in the cathedral.

The small, blue mare rolled to her hooves and stood on her hind legs. With as much care as she could muster, Colgate reached a tiny hoof to Daemeon’s eye and rubbed a tear away just as it was to descend down his cheek. The motion pulled him from his contemplation, and their eyes met. Taking a deep breath, Colgate stated, “You loved her.”

The man responded with silence.

The mare pressed, “You loved her with all your heart.”

Daemeon’s lip quivered visibly as he said, “How could I not? She may have been a whore and a lazy bum, but she was my mother.” He paused a second to sniffle before adding, “She took care of me and was my whole world for the first nine years of my life.”

Colgate’s ears fell back in horror as she timidly asked, “Nine years?”

Silence again.

Barely having the courage to speak, the mare asked, “What happened to her?”

Daemeon broke his silence by saying, “Chaos happened.” Before Colgate could respond, he continued in a shaky but uninterrupted voice, “You like to laugh don’t you? Of course you do. The world is full of funny little tidbits, humorous little ironies. And really, the more chaotic they are, the more comical they can be. So, I guess you could say it’s a funny story really. Or is it a tragic story? Aren’t those lines always so blurred. One man’s pain is often another man’s entertainment.”

Colgate noticed that his voice sped up as he spoke. Though his eyes did not leave hers, she felt like he was again in the midst of one of his rants. The more he spoke, the wilder he looked and the more fear Colgate felt in his presence.

“But as for what happened to my mother, that’s the juiciest bit of chaos ever. Tell me Colgate. When you were a child, did you ever do anything your parents had to admonish you for?”

The blue mare nodded her head answering, “Well, yeah. But. . .”

“But of course they did!” he launched in suddenly. “That’s what they’re supposed to do isn’t it? They are supposed to protect you from danger so your ignorance doesn’t kill you. That was not quite the case for me, you see. My mother needed me too much for me to enjoy the pleasure of ignorance. With her debilitating arthritis, inability to work a computer, and incorrigible laziness brought on by a life of whoring and feeding off of government handouts, she wasted no time in putting me to work.”

Colgate frowned, growing uneasy as his voice gradually rose in anger. She asked, “What do you mean ‘work?’”

Daemeon’s eyes flashed wildly as he explained, “It wasn’t such a bad thing. I should praise her for doing it in a way. Being as lazy as she was, she did everything in her power to make sure life happened with the least amount of work done. So, she sat in her favorite chair and waited for her checks to come in the mail. By the time I was four, she had taught me how to forge her signature. Soon after, she had taught me how to fill out the forms altogether, so she wouldn’t have to. By the time I walked to my first class of first grade, I could read, write, and understand complex instructions.”

He snorted loudly before continuing, “A teacher said once that I should go to a special school for how smart I was. Like that ever had a chance of happening. I’m convinced I was never that brilliant. I just knew the price of failure. By the time second grade rolled around, she had me walking the streets of New York City to do her chores. She would give me money and food stamps from her security checks, and I would come back with essentials. We had a brilliantly simple life.” His head slumped forward, and his eyes gazed down at his lap as his voice shifted from an aggressive volume to a whisper, “That is, until I turned nine.”

Colgate fell into Daemeon’s chest as his gaze fell from her’s. She rested the tip of her horn between his moist eyes and pleaded, “It’s okay. What happened then?”

A tear dripped from the tip of Daemeon’s nose to and hit the blue mare’s fuzzy cheek. As his tear rolled down her cheek, Colgate felt his arms engulf her. Her body was completely blanketed in the white robes he wore. She would have reveled in the comforting warmth if her ape wasn’t so distraught. His distress caused her distress, and she again lifted a hoof to rub away the tears.

That leg was caught up in Daemeon’s bandaged hand. His fingers wrapped around the tiny hoof, accentuating Colgate’s small frame. The handsome man shut his eyes, unable to look at the mare any longer, and explained with a trembling voice, “I’d say it was an accident, but really, everything is an accident. In the chaos of the universe, anything is bound to happen whether we intend it to or not. The circumstances that lead up to it really don’t matter that much. You know that. You said so yourself. The couch is white just because it is.”

Colgate took a deep breath, trembling, and asked, “Daemeon, did you. . .”

“I killed my mother.”

The small, blue mare gaped at Daemeon and stuttered, “You, you killed your mother?”

The hand grasping her tiny hoof tightened its grip as he slowly nodded his head. Daemeon’s entire body trembled as he seemed to be struggling to keep any sense of composure. His eyes were squeezed shut as he fought through wheezing, ragged breaths to whisper, “Yes.”

Colgate shuddered, having no clue what to do. In all honesty, she wanted to run away. She knew she couldn’t though. Even if she escaped from Daemeon’s crushing grasp, their souls were tethered with powerful magic. She couldn’t leave him, and he couldn’t leave her. So, not knowing what else to do, the unicorn asked, “How?”

Daemeon’s eyes flashed open suddenly in terrifying anger. His grasp around Colgate tightened as he screamed, “What does it matter how? She’s dead. She’s dead because of me. I killed her, and now, I live every day with the memory of what I did. The how doesn’t matter. She’s dead just because she is. Knowing what caused it isn’t going to change a thing!”

Colgate shook in fear as Daemeon’s voice reverberated throughout the empty cathedral. In the silence, it seemed louder than any chorus and bore the ever present anger and anguish of a soul tormented with grief. Colgate again found herself fearing for her life in Daemeon’s arms. She began to struggle out of his grasp. It didn’t work though as she felt Daemeon cling to her even tighter and scream, “What’s this? You’re trying to get away? You think I’m a monster too?”

The tiny mare’s struggle grew into a flail as she fought for her life. She kicked as hard as her hooves would allow in her awkward position. When her movement only caused Daemeon to tighten his grip on her, forcing the very air out of her lungs and making her fear she would be crushed to death, she did the only thing she could think to do. With all the strength she could muster, she opened her jaw and thrust her perfect white teeth against Daemeon’s breast. The two cassocks offered him little protection as the mare’s miniature teeth pierced the cloth and met with his flesh.

Daemeon’s screams of anger and Colgate’s cries of terror simultaneously became a chorus of agony as the cruel man’s grip loosened, and he shoved the mare away. The mare’s head fell against the pew, causing a decent bump to swell, but her hooves were clutched to her chest as small streams of blood trickled down her gossamer blue coat. Her hind legs kicked wildly as she wailed in misery. She looked down to see a deep oval cut into her breast just outside her rapidly beating heart. Her teary eyes were torn from it only at the memory of her attacker.

Colgate looked to find Daemeon doubled over, wheezing painfully. His hand clutched his chest where she’d bit him. The scream he’d ushered when she’d bitten him was spent, and he was reduced to moaning painfully. The mare might have sympathized with him if it weren’t for the fact that she felt the exact same degree of pain. She knew her beliefs were true then. Just as she’d hurt him, so she hurt herself. In her moment of peril, she realized that, if it was a choice between the ugly ape and herself, she would choose herself.

So, even as the wicked pain of the wound outside her heart made her body quiver, Colgate could almost smile. She wasn’t going to go down without a fight. She wasn’t going to let that beast hurt her. She wasn’t just going to lie there and take it. With blood on her hooves and venom on her tongue, she spat at Daemeon, “I hate you!”

Silence ruled in the moment that followed. Daemeon ceased his pained moaning and very gradually righted himself. The ceremonial hood of the cassock had fallen over his head, leaving his face draped in its shadow. Colgate could tell little of his features in the light reflected off the altar aside from his tear stained nose and shadowed chin. The chin trembled and the nose dripped as he calmly whispered in answer, “And I envy you.”

“What!?” Colgate bellowed, grunting as the pain in her chest sharpened.

The bright white robes reddened underneath Daemeon’s hands. He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly before saying, “I envy that you can hate me. I can’t hate you. I can’t even hate me.”

Colgate slid to her side and curled up in a ball. Biting her lip through the pain, she pressed her hoof down on her chest as hard as her little frame would allow to stop the bleeding. She shut her eyes, wishing again to be gone, and asked irritably, “What do you mean?”

Giving little indication anymore that the pain was mutual, he answered, “Hate is a terrible thing. It drives men to kill each other. It makes them greedy and violent. It breeds all wars and terror.” He paused for a wincing breath. “Hate is the tapestry on which all of mankind’s ugliness is painted. All wrong inflicted on any man is the result of some hateful act one person has inflicted on another. It might be a direct cause, like a murder done out of spite. Or it could be just a distant dream, like the oppression of one race over another from a thousand years ago. In the end though, no matter how distant or present the hate is, it all leads to the same conclusion; chaos.

“I know this for a fact. And yet,” he said, turning his face full on to the cringing little mare, “I envy that you can hate me. It’s like I said before. Hate isn’t an action. It’s a reaction. All hate is just the result of people protecting what they love. You hate me because you love yourself, and I tried to hurt you. That’s the most basic kind of love. In that sense, even the simplest forms of life can love and hate.” He lowered his face, again casting it in shadow, and remarked, “I am one of the few exceptions.”

Colgate furrowed her brow and stated, “You can’t hate me because you don’t love yourself.”

Daemeon nodded his head and turned away from her. His eyes fell again on the simple altar around which the hundreds of pews faced. The white cloth adorning it shined in the night lighting of the cathedral, drawing focus away from the otherwise dim halls. He lifted a bloodied hand from his chest to rub away some of the tears already crusting in his eyes. He answered, “It’s not just myself that I don’t love. I don’t love anything anymore.”

“Anymore?” Colgate asked with a raised eyebrow.

Daemeon sighed. “I told you before. I loved my mother. Even as you said, I loved her with all my heart. Despite the whore she was, I loved her until her death.” He choked as a tear dripped off his nose. “I loved her until I killed her.”

Colgate opened her mouth to ask him how but stopped when she remembered that it was that very question that had almost gotten her killed. She instead remained silent and tried to focus her attention away from the pain in her chest. She tried to think of something to say but was interrupted by Daemeon as he said, “I know what you’re wondering. You’re thinking to yourself, ‘How did the monster kill his mother? By what sick means did he dispose of the wretched woman?’ Well, it’s a short story really. In the midst of a fairly dreary and boring summer afternoon, I devised a game with knives.” Daemeon gestured with his hand as he explained simply, “I liked playing with knives because they were dangerous. I also liked playing with them because my mother didn’t like it. She hardly had the energy or motivation to do anything about it however, so I was usually left to my own devices.”

Colgate frowned in horror at where his story might be going.

“If I’d have had a father or a more caring mother, I might have taken better care to realize that knives are dangerous if you’re not careful. It’s tough for a child to internalize danger though. A stove isn’t hot until you’ve touched it. The man offering candy isn’t dangerous until you’ve been stolen away.” Daemeon paused to sniffle audibly before continuing, “And a knife isn’t sharp until you’ve cut yourself or someone you love. I learned that knives were sharp the hard way when, in one of the infrequent absences of my mother, I decided to make a throne of knives. I did this by bringing all of our sharpest knives to my mother’s favorite chair and sticking the handles in so the blades faced out.”

The mare cringed.

“To the eyes of a rambunctious nine year old, it was a grand throne, spiky and ominous. I thought it was such fun that I just left it as it was. I figured I would enjoy the sight as long as I could before my mother ruined it.” Daemeon echoed a pained sigh and slumped over. His elbows rested on his knees as his hands clutched his heart. He continued, “As luck would have it, she didn’t ruin it. She got home and sat down in her chair without looking. She must have died pretty quickly because none of the neighbors heard her scream or anything. I was outside at the time, playing with tar that had come up from a crack in the road.”

Daemeon turned his face back towards Colgate. His features were lit up just enough to reveal the sadness in his eyes. “You should be laughing Colgate,” he whispered bitterly. “Isn’t it a sweet irony? I made my throne of knives and wished that it wouldn’t be wrecked, and that’s exactly what happened. Come on Colgate. Laugh!” He tilted his head back and bellowed out a painful, mechanical laugh.

When the echoes of his loud excursion died down, he asked, “Why don’t you laugh at my pain? Don’t ponies laugh at each others pain like you said? Aren’t my shenanigans humorous?”

Colgate couldn’t help but pout as she answered, “It’s not funny when somepony gets hurt like that or dies. You don’t laugh at something like that.”

“No?” Daemeon queried with a raised eyebrow. “Then I guess it’s only good to laugh when someone gets hurt a little bit. Maybe if she’d only been cut up badly and not died. Then would it have been funny?”

The little mare gawked and begged, “How can you ask something like that? Of course it wouldn’t be funny!”

“So you say, Ms. Minuette,” he beckoned slowly, “but why?”

“Because,” Colgate shouted, her anger rising, “it’s not nice to laugh when somepony’s in pain! Especially if it’s somepony you love.”

“Ahh, but Colgate,” Daemeon said with an ugly, false smile, “isn’t it easier to laugh at somebody’s pain when you hate him? Don’t you enjoy seeing ponies you hate getting their due? You hate me. Don’t you get just a little satisfaction from my pain? Didn’t it make you feel just a little better to bite me and make me bleed?”

“Did it?” she wondered. The dentist’s tongue slid over her perfectly white teeth, sensing the taste of copper. Her face flushed red as she couldn’t help but admit to herself that she’d liked the feeling. The satisfaction that came to her as she first saw Daemeon curled over in pain had been tremendous. She’d almost smiled. A shiver went up her diminutive, equine spine at the thought.

Daemeon shot up an accusatory finger and stated, “You hurt me, and it felt good. It felt good to protect yourself, to protect what you love. Because you love yourself, it felt good to see the person you hate get hurt.”

“But. . .”

“But nothing!” Daemeon shouted. “The hate kept you safe. Hate is what keeps the individual safe from other people who hate. Everyone finds something or someone to love and then learns to hate everything that threatens whatever they’ve chosen. They use love to build a protective little cocoon and impose order on whatever they can. In trying to create order with love though, they breed hate for everything foreign and, in so doing,” he paused and muttered with unrivaled contempt, “chaos.”

Colgate frowned severely and said, “But I thought you liked chaos!”

Dismally, and with tragic countenance, he answered her, “I don’t think a soul on Earth could be as misguided as you. My enmity for chaos knows no bounds.”

“What?!” the mare cried in exclamation. “You’re lying! How can that possibly be? You’re so mean and calculating. You’re a liar, a big ugly ape, and all you’ve done is hurt me. You even said that you’re an agent of Discord! You said that the world is ruled by chaos, and you’re a part of it.”

Taking a deep breath, Daemeon answered her in a tone that echoed both sadness and resignation, “I am a part of it. You’re a part of it. All of us are a part of it. We can’t help it.” He reclined his head against the pew and continued softly, “But you’re wrong about my lying. If there was one thing I could hate, it would be chaos. It was chaos that killed my mother. I might have been instrumental in the events leading up to her death. If you look directly, you can even say that I killed her. If you look a little further back, you could blame her for not curtailing my vice of playing with knives better. If you look further back still, you could blame her for getting pregnant with me irresponsibly in the first place. Before that you could blame her own birth or society for being so structured that being a whore is a valid profession. You could blame my father for not wearing a condom. You could blame television for promulgating violence and leading me to fantasize about the power I felt holding those knives in my hands.” He turned his head back to Colgate, curled in a ball only four feet from him, and asked, “But you know now Colgate. What really killed her?”

With a soft hint of sadness tingeing her voice, she replied, “I don’t know.”

Daemeon shook his head and pressed, “Yes, you do. Tell me, little unicorn, why is the couch white?”

The little blue mare grimaced violently at the question. As much as she’d hated answering the question the first time, now she feared it even more. Before, she had sworn disagreement against the thought. “How can chaos be the answer?” she thought to herself. “Everything I’ve ever known has taught me that chaos is not the answer.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shivered, “He has to be wrong. I’ve read the stories. We used to live with chaos, and life was horrible. The princesses brought order back to Equestria and brought us to peace. He just can’t be right.”

“I’m waiting Colgate,” he said expectantly. “You’ve already answered this question once. You shouldn’t be having any more trouble now.”

At Daemeon’s beckoning, Colgate opened her eyes. She moved her hooves from her wicked bite. The gauze on her injured hoof was now stained with the blood of two wounds. With surprising determination, she stood up on three wobbly legs, grunting through obvious and almost agonizing pain. Between being beaten, unfed, bitten, manipulated, and almost crushed to death, all done to her in a single wearisome day, she struck a small and abused figure. Her small, trembling frame was reminiscent of a small animal that was lost, alone, and near death. Yet, despite all that, her voice echoed with power as she proclaimed, “You are wrong!”

Daemeon fell back, once again shocked to silence.

The mare continued, “I know what you want me to say. You want me to say the couch is white ‘just because it is’. You want me to say that your mother died just because she did. You want me to say that all existence is just chance and circumstance. I bet you want me to say that just so you can erase the guilt. You want somepony else to share your messed up views of life just so you can feel better about yourself. Well, I’m not going to give you the satisfaction. There’s something bigger at work here, something bigger than the randomness.”

With sarcasm drenching his voice, Daemeon demanded, “And just what might that be?”

Colgate turned away from him and looked at her cutie mark. The half filled hourglass echoed the pains of her profession and reminded her of exactly who she was and why she was there. That little picture had dictated so much of her life, and she was tired of it. She was ready to change it. She felt that it couldn’t simply have been a mistake. If Princess Celestia was involved, there had to be some higher purpose. It was just a matter of time before she learned what that was. She sighed with some resignation though to the fact that she still didn’t know what that purpose was. She wasn’t certain what it was, but she was certain that she knew that it was. So, with conviction, she answered, “I don’t know.”

Daemeon snorted and waved his hand dismissively, “Of course you don’t. You don’t know because you can’t know, just like that stupid, old priest.”

Colgate stuck up her nose and retorted, “At least he seemed a lot nicer than you.”

“Seemed is the key word Colgate.” He slid himself over to close much of the gap between himself and the mare. Colgate flinched back. “You can’t really run away. You’ll have to take me at my word when I say I’m not going to hurt you. Even if my word isn't very good to you.”

Daemeon raised his hand to the mare, but she pulled away and cried, “Don’t touch me!”

Daemeon sighed and reached his good hand to his opposite shoulder. Taking a fist of fabric firmly in his grip, he tugged at the seams where the sleeve met the torso. Colgate winced at seeing Daemeon grimace in such pain that sweat appeared on his brow. He gave several powerful tugs until the sleeve was rent from the rest of the garment. He motioned the tube of fabric at Colgate and said, “Roll over.”

“Why?” Colgate asked with a frown.

With a gentle seriousness, he explained, “It doesn’t do either of us much good if you’re in pain. You might as well roll over so I can bandage you up.”

Colgate grimaced at the thought but couldn’t find a flaw in his logic. She didn’t even think she could do it for herself. The pain from the bite would have made it difficult to focus her magic for a task as complicated as that. So, after a moment’s hesitation, she conceded the point and rolled onto her back, covering herself with her tail to keep some semblance of dignity.

Daemeon bent low over her to inspect the bite. He frowned when he noted the two dark semicircles. Her beautiful, gossamer blue coat was plagued by the ugly red blood. It dripped down her chest and crusted on her soft fur. Daemeon lifted the cloth and brought it down as gently as he could manage. As the sleeve touched down, Colgate flinched back and cried, “Ow!”

Daemeon tensed up as well, agitation flooding his face, and said, “I’m sorry. It hurts, but I have to do it. I’ll try to be as careful as I can. Okay?”

Colgate’s expression of distress softened at Daemeon’s consolation. She exposed her breast and Daemeon’s cloth clad fingers came down again. The mare kept her eyes fixed on her big ape’s ugly, hairless face as he touched her cut and immediately applied pressure. Colgate groaned loudly in pain and curled in a ball around Daemeon’s hand.

Daemeon responded by reaching down and cradling her in his arms. He hugged her close with his hand pressed firmly against her chest and cooed, “It’s okay. It’s okay. I have to do this. The bleeding has to stop first before I wrap you up. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you.”

The tiny mare shivered through the pain as Daemeon continued to wordlessly hold her. After several minutes passed, when the pain seemed to be more tolerable, Daemeon fell to wrapping the cloth around her wound. He tugged the sleeve around her minute rib cage and tied it behind her back. Colgate could do nothing but struggle through the pain. At several points she almost fell to whimpering and pleading him to stop. Even then, she bit her lip and stood as strongly as she could on her three wobbly legs.

When all was said and done, Daemeon picked the mare up and cradled her against his chest again. He noted the evident exhaustion she exuded. Her entire frame was limp, and she looked to be on the verge of passing out. Daemeon couldn’t help but admit his own exhaustion as he cradled the mare’s head against his chest, ignoring the pain he felt in his own bite, and slid into a laying position on the padded pew. He took comfort in the four little hooves pressed against his chest as he ran his fingers through the soft though muddled tresses of Colgate’s beautiful white and blue mane. Somehow, the pain seemed a great deal more tolerable with the little blue pony in his grasp.

Just when he was certain she was asleep, the mare surprised him by muffling into his chest, “I’m sorry about your mother.”

Daemeon responded by hugging her just a little tighter and whispering, “Thank you.”

“Daemeon?”

“Yeah?”

“I saw your face when you were bandaging me. You looked like you were really sorry about hurting me. Where you faking that, or did you really feel bad?”

“I,” Daemeon stuttered, “I uh, I did feel bad.”

“Why? I thought you said people enjoyed seeing others they don’t like getting hurt.”

Daemeon took a deep breath and stroked the length of Colgate’s back. A strange expression peaked at the corners of his mouth, tilting them upwards in an unseen and uncharacteristic fashion. With a fairly shaky voice, he answered her, “I don’t like seeing you get hurt. Despite how much you might hate me, I’m scared to admit I actually like you Colgate. As much as it terrifies me, in one day you managed to get me to care about you.”

“Daemeon.”

The handsome man with the backswept, brown hair answered her, “Yeah?”

“As much as you’ve hurt me, I don’t hate you.”

Daemeon tensed in anticipation, “No?”

The mare nuzzled her face against his chest, glad for the warmth he gave her. Despite everything he’d done to her, she didn’t think she’d ever felt safer than in his arms. She returned, “I think I like you too.”

Daemeon shivered as he felt goosebumps run the course of his entire body. He didn’t say a word but hugged her ever closer. Within moments, the silence of the massive cathedral overtook them, and they drifted softly into sleep.