Subjunctive

by Integral Archer

Chapter XXVII: Disjunctive

As quickly as I could, I shrugged out of her embrace and ran.

I didn’t know where I was going, and the direction didn’t matter; I needed to get away from her, away from the city, its creatures, away from the prying sun, down to the darkest recess I could find.

She called out to me as I ran. Her voice dispersed over the crowd, as a wave over a tumultuous sea, but I could hear it a little longer yet, as though she were pursuing me. Five city blocks later, still I felt her gaze. I heard her beckoning through the voices of the crowd and the rush of blood in my ears.

I was coming to the surface, and I couldn’t hold myself back. In the woods, after Elision, I had nagged, prodded my abdomen, and jumped out every so often in a devious wise. Annoying, anxiety-inducing, yes, I had been, but never harmful, never in a crowded city, and never as threatening as I was now.

I had been dormant since leaving the forest and coming into the city, and I had been completely forgotten. What had brought me back . . . what was in her touch, her tears, her love that caused me to rise so violently . . . it couldn’t be said. But I was, and there was no repressing me this time. “Here I come,” I said. “Be you in a city, on a skyscraper, on a train, in a tunnel—regardless of all, I’m back.”

I ran through the city in an blind, unthinking frenzy, looking for that dark spot in which to keep myself back. But there were no clouds, and the sun beat down upon the buildings, its light showering down in prisms through the air, off the windows, onto the sidewalks, the roads, the ponies, in the midst of which was I, limping, sweat soaking my hair—desperate, humid rasps coming from my mouth, while I tried to find like humidity in the shade.

Near the coast, the road traversed a bridge spanning a small valley. There were no stairs from the bridge down into the gorge, only slightly inclined walls that sloped down and away, covered in red dust and sand.

My first step down this gorge was on my bad leg; a violent pain seized it, and I tumbled, rolled twice or three times, before sliding the rest of the way down on my chin, dust flying into my nose and eyes.

It was dark underneath the bridge. It was only then, seeing light reflecting off my cheeks from my irises, that I knew my facade was gone. I couldn’t say when I’d lost it. The panic was gone, however; I didn’t fear my own form, nor did I fear that anyone would see me. If they saw me, so be it, I thought; if no one saw me, so be it; if she approached and discovered what I was, so be it; if I never walked out from under this bridge, if I were to lie on the sand until my body itself became the sand, and the ocean were to rise and sweep me away, sweep this bridge away, inundate the city, the land, drown all and everything—so be it.

There, a few footpaces away from me in the shadow of the bridge, were a few ponies huddled around a weakly burning fire. They hadn’t stirred when I’d fallen, nor did they care, but those pale, emaciated, huddled figures instead stared deeply into the small pit of life they had managed to rise from the dregs that were their existence, and gladly, rapturously, and almost sorrowfully, they looked on. It was only then, in front of that fire, could the light be seen flickering in their eyes. One raised his head and looked in my direction. To him, it was simple. The choice was between looking at the friendly, warm, red, twisting flame, or the spiteful creature thrown from the darkness. He looked at me only for a few seconds before he snorted and turned back to his companions, whose faces lit up in proportion as the fire grew when they fed it with more precious scraps.

She would be here at any moment, no doubt having tracked me from the sky, and if I didn’t consolidate myself now, I would no longer have the opportunity to—though it occurred to me that her finding out I wasn’t who I said I was wasn’t what I feared the most, nor did I think that it would cause me the most harm.

I gasped, groaned, and then shrieked (neither of which did anything to stir the dregs from their fire)—for I couldn’t remember who I was and what I was doing here. Disjunct and brief flashes of a strange being saying stranger things to the strangest creatures appeared before me: A young foal playing with others . . . an eccentric professor . . . a warrior who was too weak to lift his armor . . . a mate . . . a sailor . . .

I could not consolidate them. They were too different, too motley, in order to ascribe to a single entity.

A name I’d forgotten, bestowed to a foal at birth, lofty to the dam and sire but having little meaning to the illiterate foal himself; Errenax, a strange transliteration of that same arbitrary assignation; Brother Commander, an appellation I knew not the significance of whom it was given to, but it seemed to me to be ascribed to a target of mockery; dearest little brother, given in blind passion once and never used again, making me question the veracity of the superlative adjective; and Scholar, a generic label made in jest, to hide what really was.

To each was a different name; to each was a different, unrecognizable form. And they were all mutually exclusive, impossible to put to one.

When I thought about Elision, there was something soothingly consonant about her, and it was this consonance that I dwelled upon, longed to go back to and cherish; I wanted to be able to hold her as I had before, and be able to say, Yes, you are Elision, my Elision, no one else’s, nothing else. When I thought about her, I settled down again, a little shaken up and disoriented but still confident if not in my past actions then at least in those I would make in the future, be they however different in method from the ones in the past. I had only to hold her to calm myself.

With her memory soothing my thoughts, I got up and made for the wall of the valley to climb out of the gorge. I had nearly reached the top of the hill before I realized that I hadn’t changed back.

I couldn’t change.

I tried to hold onto Elision harder, but she only served to make my anxiety lessen further. And however mollifying she was, she didn’t give me the power to change back. For it was not anxiety that impaired my ability to change. It gave me no fear to think of the prospect of being discovered. It wasn’t a fear of the judgment of others that prompted my desire to change; rather, it was a strange judgement of myself, telling me, seemingly contradictorily, that it would be a harmful lie to appear on the streets as though I were one of them, trying to hide the glaring and obvious difference between myself and them.

The harder I held Elision, the less firm was my grip on me. She wouldn’t let me change into what I’d created for myself.

Who would? I thought. Certainly not Fluttershy, for thinking about her gave me no comfort and allowed me to progress in no direction.

What about Nihil? I knew so little about him that to think about him was to think about nothing. It was through him that I was able to temporize, to turn my brain to nothing, to abandon judgement, decision, and responsibility; it was through him that I could calm myself enough to change once again.

I climbed out of the gorge, still covered in dust. It was not long until Fluttershy found me. She was nearly in tears, saying how scared she was when I’d run away, asking why I’d left so quickly; and if it was anything she did, she was sorry. I gave her some excuses, feigning illness. I didn’t have the effort to dress up my words to her with my usual tone, gesticulations, and all those other affectations deceivers use to hide their lies. My lies showed plainly, and she understood them to be lies.

Yet, it didn’t seem as though she cared.

“You still need to get home?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“There’s a blockade on the ports, but Nihil seems confident enough. And since he was kind enough to donate his ship to you, I’d say it’s our best chance to get you home.”

The plural pronoun perked up my ears. “Our?” I repeated. “You’re coming?”

She shrugged gaily, her wings twitching with delight, as she hopped anxiously on her hooves. “Sure! I have to make sure you get home safely.”

“I thought Nihil scared you.”

“He did, but”—and here she turned her head, her mane falling over her eyes, trying to hide her blush—“with you, I’m not scared of anything. Nothing can happen to us.”

She started across the bridge; and, from behind, I did not recognize her. The pony who had walked down that forlorn train track was not the same pony who now walked thus across the bridge. The former had not even wanted to face me, whereas the latter turned back with a smile when I didn’t follow immediately, gestured with a hoof, and sung out in a clear voice: “Well, come on! If we don’t hurry, Nihil will leave without us!”

I trotted after her. My will, with its vicissitudes, flailed impotently in the presence of another, stronger, unknown, and terrifying influence that carried me forward and after her.

Comments

[VNilla]

Changeling depression is confusing.

[livinthelife]

I may have said it before, but I'll say it again; I love the language of this story. It truly feels like something translated from a foreign tongue, every line subtly strange and alien and confusing and beautiful.

[PresentPerfect]

I did... Did he change back? Or has she really known what he was all along, and thus had no surprise at seeing his true form for the first time?