Starswirl galloped.
He didn't know where to, nor did he know what for, nor did he particularly care. He was a pony, and there was a vast field in front of him; running through it seemed like the natural thing to do. As his legs propelled him across the grassy plain sprawling out under the vivid cerulean sky, he felt more vigorous and full of energy than he had in a long while. The breeze blew his mane back and sent it flowing out behind him. He lowered his head and streamlined his body to power himself up a hill.
As he crested it, however, he glimpsed the pony some hundred feet ahead of him, and suddenly remembered why he was running:
Mareco Polo.
She was running away, and he had to catch her or she'd leave him behind forever.
He shouted her name.
She glanced back, laughed, and put on a burst of speed.
He worked his legs harder and faster, yet strangely he started slowing down. His sides ached as he heaved for breath. Simply moving his body was rapidly becoming a painful, arduous struggle.
Mareco had already doubled the distance between them.
Why was he slowing....?
Then he looked down at his forelegs. To his astonished horror, they were wearing themselves down and becoming hobbled right in front of his eyes. His knees and fetlocks started collapsing under him as his body burned itself out with age, but he forged ahead through the pain. He cried out Mareco's name again; even his voice had become feeble.
Ignoring him, she crested the next hill, spread her wings, and leapt into the air.
He threw out a hoof in a vain attempt to grab hold of her, but as he was in the middle of a stride, it caused him to go falling into the grass. He rolled sideways down the slope, each thump against the ground sending pain shooting through his crippled, gnarled body. When he finally came to rest, it refused to move again, and he was trapped inside it. It took all his strength just to crane his head up and stare after the beautiful pegasus who'd taken to wing.
She soared up and away into the cerulean sky, flying directly into the sun.
The intense solar light blinded him. Wincing, he turned his head away, only to realize what he'd been running from.
A creeping darkness spilled over the countryside behind him, withering the verdant grass and turning it yellow and parched. The distant line of trees on the horizon shed their leaves and decomposed into brittle, dead snags. The clear blue sky turned black as night, and the celestial spheres keeping the cosmos aloft started sagging. The black fabric strung up behind the planets, stars, and moons fell away, and he glimpsed the arcing orrery mechanisms holding those distant objects firm. Then the orrery itself rusted and collapsed inwards.
The world was falling to pieces around him, and he had to get up and run away, but his aged, broken body wouldn't move. All he could do was stare in horror as the withering shadow sucked the life out of the landscape and raced up to meet him.
And right before it devoured him, he heard a laughing voice....
Starswirl awoke with a jerk, his head darting around wildly. As soon as his eyes focused, though, they came to rest on the brilliant dawn streaming through Carmine's living room window. His rattled nerves slowly eased up, and he capitalized on the chance to pry their grip on his body loose. He relaxed, laid back down, and rested his chin on the couch cushions again.
It's still here, he thought to himself.
Although quite what 'it' was, he couldn't tell. The dream faded from his mind like water vapor from a boiling flask escaping into the air.
He calmed his breathing and wiped away the sweat pouring down his face and matting his beard.
It was just a dream, Starswirl. Nothing but a dream.
Since Starswirl had awoken before his host, he took it upon himself to draw the wellwater as he'd done the other day. As he ambled out of the house, he felt the weight of the years in his joints, which creaked and ached like never before.
His ears picked up as they caught a childish giggle. He turned in the direction it came from and spotted three foals, one of them with distinctive golden curls, hightailing it back towards the town proper. He frowned, wondering why they would be laughing while running away. Then, he turned and looked around for the vandalism. It didn't take him long. He saw 'U-No-Corn!' scrawled on the round stone mill building in chalk.
"Hmm," he murmured. "Impressive. I wasn't even sure she could spell."
With a nod of his horn, he reached out with his magic, levitated the wooden washtub off the grass, and set it floating at his side. He headed towards the well, passing villagers with cruel, condescending eyes smiling broadly at him, no doubt about the vandalism. Undeterred, he returned their smiles and strove--in vain--to strike up a conversation about the pleasant weather. As soon as they realized he was far from angry, their smiles turned to scowls and they suddenly became too busy to acknowledge his presence.
As he walked through town, he noticed could see straight through the center of it and all the way to the farms on the far side. The morning sun unfolded its light and spilled it everywhere, dousing the stout timber-framed buildings in gold. Ponies came forth from their houses and embraced the weekend with good cheer.
One of them, he thought, is a unicorn in disguise, working a dark and powerful magic. But which one is it?
He attempted to reach out with the Harmony, but as he worked his way along the connection he noticed his ability to focus it wasn't as strong as it usually was. In addition, the townfolk were generating so much anti-Harmony, especially when they glared at him and his levitating tub, that they drowned out anything he could conceivably pick up at this distance.
Starswirl approached the well and stepped up behind a pony drawing a bucket of water up by the hoist crank. The wizard watched as the slate-colored stallion hefted the bucket high in his hooves before upending the cold water all over his face and his charcoal-colored hair.
Starswirl flinched in sympathy.
The stallion whinnied and shook his head, then turned to leave.
"All yours," Diamond Joe drawled, his eyes red and his expression drained.
Raising an eyebrow, Starswirl asked, "Rough night?"
"Mister, you got no idea."
Starswirl, who did, in fact, have an idea about Diamond Joe's night, stepped aside for the sopping wet pony. Now that the well was his, the wizard magicked the washtub down onto the ground. He cracked his neck, then reached out with his unicorn magic and sent it down down into the well, where he surrounded some of the water in the well with it. He coaxed it up the shaft, sent it arcing over the rim, and directed it down into the washtub.
He ignored the townsponies, despite that he could feel the anti-Harmony coming off them in waves.
The tub was almost full to the brim when a rock hit him in the back of the head. The jolt snapped his head forward and disrupted the magic flowing through his horn. The water in transit fell and splashed all over the ground between the well and the washtub.
The crowd earth ponies around him were overcome by fits of malicious laughter.
Starswirl reached forward and picked up the rock, while also focusing himself inward and dusting off an old spell that had served him well in his alchemical career: a gem-finding spell. He sent his mind flowing through the ground in search of gemstones, where he stumbled upon what felt like an emerald and surrounded it with his magic. He then bridged the emerald with the solid stone inside the rock and siphoned the two substances out of their natural place and into each other's. He thought how handy it would be to use such a spell to teleport himself, but if it were possible, it was nowhere near refined enough yet. As soon as he discretely replaced the inside of the rock with raw emerald, he turned to face the crowd, where once again he spotted Golden Vein fleeing, this time ducking out of sight behind a cart.
"Has anypony misplaced a rock?" he called innocently.
The crowd's uproarious laughter doubled.
He smiled and said, "I'll take that as a 'no', then."
Magically levitating the rock out of his hoof and suspending it in midair, he split it apart. The crowd stopped laughing as they laid eyes on the raw chunk of gemstone within. Starswirl slowly brought it down to his hoof and inspected it.
"Well now, would you look at that?" he asked with mock surprise. "It's an emerald! Whoever gave me such a gift, I must thank you most sincerely for your generosity."
He magicked the raw emerald and the full washtub into the air and made them both follow him back to the mill, but as he passed Golden Vein's hiding place, he nodded his horn at her and tossed the emerald over the crate.
"You're a gem of a filly, my dear," he called. "Buy yourself something nice. A roof, perhaps."
As Starswirl returned to Carmine's, he saw Carmine himself standing outside, shaking his head at the vandalism. The wizard guided the washtub over and landed it on the ground. Carmine gave the display of magic a disapproving eye, but if he found fault with it he didn't voice his complaints, perhaps out of respect for practicality. Starswirl spotted a rag lying among some tools and magicked it through the air towards himself.
"I'll take care of the vandalism," Starswirl said. "Now, I expect you shall want to brew up some of that delicious tea as soon as possible, hmm?"
"You must've read my mind, Starswirl. Just let me get the water pitcher."
As Carmine trotted back inside, the wizard's magic surrounded the water in the tub and he commanded a glob to rise from the surface and hover in the air. He then dipped the levitating rag into it, and started scrubbing the chalk off the mortared stone blocks. Since he wasn't using his hooves, he took the opportunity to relax and sit down. But when his haunches hit the grass, his back cracked painfully and made him wince. He sagged forward and pressed a hoof against his spine.
Where is this coming from? he thought. I was perfectly capable of running through the forest yesterday.
Unless....I'm paying a toll for my escapade last night?
But now could I? Sometimes I may feel old, spiritually, but I'm not even middle-aged yet. Physically, I should be in perfect health. Or....
Or am I middle aged?
He realized he hadn't been keeping the strictest track of the days, or the years for that matter. But he knew he was forty-two, at the very least. Surely that was too early to be considered middle aged.
He put a hoof to his chin and thought, Or am I forty-three?
"Starswirl....?"
His head snapped up and his ears stood upright. He whipped his head this way and that, but couldn't find the source of the mare's voice. Nor could he put his hoof on why it sounded so very familiar.
"Starswirl....!"
His heart froze in his chest, and the world itself seemed to go very cold in sympathy as a chill breeze blew from the forest. He slowly craned his head towards the treeline, as he was sure the mare's voice had echoed out of its shadowy recesses.
There!
He could have sworn he saw a shape idling among the trees, but at that precise moment Carmine surprised him by trotted out with the pitcher. He only tore Starswirl's eye away from the forest for a moment, but it was enough, for when the wizard looked back to the forest, he could see neither hide nor hair of the mysterious mare.
"You alright, Starswirl?" Carmine asked as he dipped the pitcher into the tub. "You're looking mighty spooked."
Starswirl brushed him off by saying, "Yes, I'm fine. Just....had a bad dream is all."
And I am not entirely certain it's over, if I'm being honest with myself.
"Thank you for washing the mill off," Carmine said.
Shaking the unsettling thoughts out of his head, Starswirl looked at the half-dissolved chalk words, which had been momentarily driven from his mind. The rag lay in the grass, damp with the spilled water.
"Oh, no problem at all, Carmine. Think nothing of it. Just let me....finish up."
"Say, if'n you wouldn't mind, could you get the tea going? I have to wrangle Clover up and out of bed, and after last night I'm in no particular mood to be nice about it. We've got some punishment to be discussed, if'n you understand me."
"Uh, yes. Yes, I will do that once I'm finished." He quickly added, "Here. Finished here."
Carmine headed for the door, then hesitated and looked over at Starswirl once more, but Starswirl busied himself with magicking the rag into the air and raising another glob of water out of the tub. Carmine shrugged, then headed in and closed the door behind him.
Starswirl threw himself wholeheartedly into scrubbing the mortared stone blocks free of chalk, but he still caught his eyes darting nervously to the forest every so often, and that terrified him. Not because of what lay in the forest, but because it was making him lose control of himself.