Freebie Mondays: My Little Domerin – Episode 9: Act 1

I promised my twitch chat I would take Domerin, the grumpy elf main character from the Aruvalia Chronicles, and turn him into a pony if they helped me pay for my replacement computer. I never thought we’d reach that goal – but of course we did. Because my twitch chat continues to be the most generous community out there.

For more details on the project, check the intro. (There are pictures of my characters converted into ponies there as well.) You can also find links to the first half of the story here.

This story is meant to take place in the same world as “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,” though it’s unlikely any of the characters from the show will appear in the story. I have attempted to adopt the style of storytelling used by the show (including an episodic format and a ‘season’ instead of chapters in a novel). And some of the ponies that appear were created by donators from my chat. VoDs of the writing sessions are available on my youtube channel!

I hope you enjoy this crazy, silly little romp!
. . .

The night after their triumph in the woods, Crescent didn’t sleep. He perched in the window with the curtains drawn tight around his back, and he watched as ponies scurried through the shadows cast by the buildings in the streets below. He didn’t know for certain what the various leaders of the gathering army were up to, but he could guess.

The small, wiry shapes that fitted through the front gate were likely messengers dispatched to distant knight encampments to update them on the latest developments. Caravans would be diverted, new sentry positions would be established, and the runners would return over the next few days, tired and out of breath with news from distant lands.

The heavier figures carting wagons at their backs were most likely the supply managers, assistants for the smiths and squires for the knights attempting to shift the resources of the mountain village so that they could be better utilized by the new arrivals – or moved to some other location.

In the bright glow of forge fires, the blacksmiths worked tirelessly through the night, bathed in the heat and sweat of their craft. By morning, there was a stockpile of new weapons to distribute and new braces ready to be applied to many of the defenses.

Knights roused from the tents that had to be pitched along the main street in order to accommodate the swelling population, and workers emerged from homes, bakeries and common houses to distribute the morning vittles.

Domerin predictably roused in the early hours just after dawn to join his fellows in the streets below. Crescent made certain to slip into bed just before he roused and pretend to sleep so he could continue his observations from afar. No sooner did the army’s rising star exit the tavern than did a crowd of eager new arrivals surround him. He was soon carried away on the crowd to dine at the large tables set near the village’s center, and Crescent assumed he would be subject to a myriad of introductions before anyone allowed him to escape and perform other tasks.

Crescent sighed as he watched the eager knights in their gleaming armor surround his beloved, and he cast a forlorn glance over his shoulder at the time remote that perched on the table where he kept it when they were ‘home.’

He was not as well studied as Domerin when it came to the details of this war. But he did know Aruvalia’s history. He knew it was forged in the camaraderie between the knights who came together to defend its various fledgling cities from the invading hillfolk. He knew that many of the biggest cities were already in their earliest stages of development while he pressed his nose to this cool window and watched his breath fog the glass.

He didn’t know the details of every battle about to happen; he certainly hadn’t read up on the details just before they left as Domerin did. But he knew from what he could see that this small mountain outpost wasn’t going to hold the center of this army’s organization much longer – it had far outgrown the locals’ ability to keep it running.

Hunger eventually drove Crescent from his perch and burning curiosity eventually drove him to confirm all of his suspicions. In the days that followed, the camp did indeed pack up the bulk of its resources, and the soldiers fighting to defend the formation of this bright new kingdom took to the road, marching in steady if uneven lines to the next mustering point that had been prepared for them.

Crescent slunk through the shadows of each day’s march, observing the faces and reactions of the various people who had come together to form the kingdom he both loved and lived in. But it was always Domerin his attention was drawn to most strongly.

Domerin was restless. He couldn’t show any hint of nerves among the knights that increasingly looked to him for advice and reassurance, but Crescent knew him well enough to spot his growing anxiety.

In public, he put on a brave face and played the role of Nirem Truestrike flawlessly. He trained with the younger knights. He gathered reports from the more experienced combatants, and he kept Ryland up to date on everything he learned – with a small sprinkle of future wisdom added to the mix whenever he felt it was prudent.

But in the tent the two of them shared, Domerin unraveled. He paced endlessly. He slept restlessly. Crescent often caught him muttering to himself. He suspected his beloved would have created a journal to map the timeline as he felt it should be cultivated – if not for fear that someone might read it and discover the truth about their situation.

Crescent offered the support he could, usually in the form of calm words and warm company. But his heart ached because he knew there was only one way to solve this problem, only one thing that would allow Domerin to settle.

He knew what he had to do – he just really didn’t want to do it.

*   *   *

“We should go back,” Crescent declared as the sun descended behind the horizon on the day the village defenders caught up to the main army’s muster point. This massive camp had been composed of several smaller caravans moving along the outskirts of the border. When word from the village messengers reached them, they simply hunkered down and dug in, creating a makeshift village that was now the size of a small city in its own right.

Domerin was impressed by the layout and organization. He was impressed even more by the forethought and cleanliness. And as for the organization and leadership – they were the stuff of legends.

Part of him was deeply awed to be in the presence of the ponies that occupied this camp. He was even more humbled by the fact that they regarded him as one of their fellows. They invited him to their strategy meetings, they asked his opinion, and they insisted on sharing his company in the quiet moments between all the planning and skirmishes.

If not for the fact that he was constantly aware of the fact that he was displaced from his proper time, he wouldn’t have had a thought to spare for the modern Aruvalia in almost a week.

Instead, the future weighed heavily on his mind, threatening to drill a hole straight through the center of his skull if he didn’t soon deal with the worst of it.

“I would love to,” he replied with an explosive sigh. “But I can’t. Not until I reach the point in history where Nirem vanishes.” And they were still several months away from that moment – at the very least.

“We can come back,” Crescent insisted. “We did it before. In fact, it shouldn’t matter how much time we spend in the present eating proper food and taking a proper bath. We’ll just come back to a few seconds after we left, or something like that.”

Domerin forced a thin smile to occupy his lips even as he shook his head. “It sounds nice,” he agreed. “But you’re forgetting how precise the calculations that brought us to the proper moment had to be. If we leave here and try to come back to the same day, Rupert will have his work cut out for him. And what if we don’t get it right?”

Merely suggesting it caused a cold shiver to tear through Domerin’s spine. “What if we’re on the right track to fix the timeline and we lose it because we can’t get back in time to do something important? Or what if someone comes looking for me during the interval and can’t find me?”

He could think of dozens – if not hundreds – of scenarios that could quickly get out of hand and ruin all of their careful work.

“Surely we could compensate for all of those eventualities from the other side,” Crescent protested and shook his head. “With Rupert to handle the math-“

“There is always a possibility one of us will make a mistake,” Domerin insisted and stamped his right front hoof against the hard-packed ground on which their tent was pitched. “Look at what happened the first time we were here? If things get messed up again, even a little, we might have to go back to the beginning and start all over. We’ll have to do all of these same things over again – and we don’t even know yet if they’ve been the right things.”

Another explosive sigh escaped Domerin’s nostrils, though he turned it into a snort at the last. “I agree that we need to know what’s happening in the future, but I also think it’s too much of a risk for me to leave prematurely.”

He shot Crescent a significant look, but he felt like he shouldn’t have to.

He didn’t want to force his partner to return through the time portal without him – but he felt like he had made it abundantly clear that was what needed to happen.

He braced for another lecture including all the reasons why Crescent refused to abandon him. But after a moment of glaring daggers in his direction, Crescent instead lifted his head and squared his shoulders.

“Tell me the real reason you want me to go back without you,” he snarled, his voice low and cold – so much so, it startled Domerin into trotting two quick steps backward.

“To check on the timeline?” he replied, so shocked his voice pitched upward to make the statement a question.

“That’s bullshit, Domerin Lorehooves, and we both know it.” Crescent snarled and pawed the ground with both of his front hooves. For a moment, it looked like he would bend his body forward and leap into a charge. But instead he merely bore his teeth and narrowed his eyes into thin, dangerous slits. “You think I’m going to die. That’s why you don’t want me here.”

Domerin hoped his surprise flashed across his face.

It would be a lie to say he hadn’t considered the possibility. He had scoured his brain for someone named Tencer in his recollection of history since Crescent spoke the name, and he repeatedly came up empty.

It was also true that, in the weeks since he had stepped into the role of Nirem Truestrike and begun building his reputation among the other members of this makeshift military, he and Crescent hadn’t spent much time together as lovers. In public, when they interacted with the other knights, they tended to do so as individual warriors. Often they were seen together, and it seemed generally known they shared living space. But it wasn’t as if they had been openly affectionate in the view of others.

Given that Crescent favored stealth during the few battles they had participated in, it made sense that no stories placed them side by side during combat. And it was often easier to forget about the contribution of scouts and assassins because their activities took place in the background, outside the notice of the rest of the fighters.

But still, if Crescent had spent this entire war at his side, there should have been mention of him somewhere.

“We had this conversation before,” he retorted, just barely managing to resist snarling himself. “I think you aren’t in any of the historical accounts because you go back to the future to monitor the changes I make.”

“But in order for that to make sense, I have to find some way to report to you,” Crescent insisted. “You just got done outlining the fact that it would be dangerous or impossible for us to leave and attempt to come back-“

“For both of us, yes!” Domerin interrupted and pawed the ground in front of him. “But not for you. Crescent, if I stay, my actions and presence can be consistent. If you disappear for a week or two, no one will be the wiser. I can say I sent you to check on something or to gather more troops from the land we hail from. You can slip seamlessly in and out of this situation without causing a dire upset. It’s me that can’t risk walking away.”

Crescent bore his teeth again, but this time it was clear he was gritting them as he attempted to come up with some way to refute Domerin’s claims.

“I’m still not entirely convinced,” he insisted, though he did relax his posture and lift his chin so he no longer looked like he might charge headfirst into Domerin’s side. “Theoretically, from the future we have an unlimited amount of time to solve any of the problems that exist back here. And Rupert’s artificial intelligence is perfectly suited to that exact task. It seems far riskier to me to leave you stranded in the past when I’m not entirely certain I can get back-“

“But you will come back for me,” Domerin interrupted. “There’s proof in our history. We know that Nirem vanished shortly before the end of the war, and we know that his body was never found. That sure as hell sounds like me returning to the future.”

Instead of calming his lover, his words had the opposite effect. An odd shiver passed through Crescent’s body, momentarily making his fur stand on end. It was as if his body became a pond and Domerin’s words were a stone that formed a small ripple.

When the ripple reached the edges of Crescent’s body, however, it dissipated. His fur lay flat again and his muscles relaxed.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he said simply and plainly. “It doesn’t feel right to walk away and leave you trapped here. If we both go into the future, we at least know that problem can be solved. If I go without you…”

“I understand your fear,” Domerin murmured and ventured cautiously forward. When Crescent didn’t shy away or snarl at him, he sidled up next to his lover and pressed his side against Crescent’s.

From this proximity, he could feel the rapid, racing heartbeat of his partner. But he hoped Crescent could also feel the calm that permeated him.

He wouldn’t claim he wasn’t afraid. But he certainly wasn’t terrified. His confidence was real – mostly because he placed it all in Crescent.

“I worry about moving too often forward and backward through time,” he admitted even as he nuzzled Crescent’s neck gently. “I worry that every time we move backward we create more chances of destroying the timeline utterly. Eventually we would reach a point where we couldn’t circumvent ourselves, so we can’t think of this as an unlimited number of opportunities. It seems better to me to act as though we only have this one chance and need to do it right.”

“And if we’ve already fucked this timeline up beyond salvage?” Crescent protested.

“Then you could come fetch me and we could figure it out,” Domerin replied.

But he hoped in the depths of his soul that wasn’t what was happening right now. Mostly because he couldn’t bear the thought of having to go back and do everything all over again.

“I don’t think you’re going to die,” he added softly and reinforced the statement with another gentle nuzzle to Crescent’s neck. “But I think you’re afraid of losing me if you let me out of your sight.”

Crescent tensed beneath Domerin’s caresses, but only for a moment. Then he snorted and said, “Can you blame me? Even when time travel isn’t involved, you’re like a rocket, Domerin. Sometimes I can barely keep up with you let alone guess what you might do next. There are a lot of years between this day and the one we left, and I do fear it would be much harder to intercept you in an ongoing timeline than it would be to make a new one. Have you even considered what might happen if I leave without you and you can’t get back?”

“I imagine I would try to live some kind of worthwhile life,” Domerin replied with a shrug. Though perhaps that was evidence enough he hadn’t really thought about it.

“But think about it this way,” he added before Crescent could snarl at him again. “We’ve been to the future. We’ve seen what it’s supposed to look like. And you and I were there together. We might not have met each other, but I heard our voices drifting down the corridor, and the royal children we met had no reason to lie. If we do this right – and that is certainly the goal – then we have nothing to fear. And there must have been some reason our future selves wanted to avoid us. I have to assume it was so they wouldn’t give anything important away.”

Domerin could feel Crescent’s resistance giving away. Tension leaked from his body, and Crescent leaned into Domerin’s stolid form, allowing the larger pony to support his weight. For a moment, it seemed as if Crescent’s knees might buckle and he might sink onto the rug that had been spread across the floor of their tent to grant them comfort against the cold, hard ground. But this was not weakness taking over, this was merely an acceptance of the inevitable.

When Crescent looked up, there were unshed tears shimmering in his eyes. “I’m going to do this,” he replied, though his voice was strained and it was clear he spoke around a lump rising in his throat. “But I want you to understand that the only reason I’m doing it is because you need me to. You need to know what’s happening back in our time, and I’ve been able to see that from the start. But I’m not abandoning you, Domerin Lorehooves, do you understand? If I have to tear a hole through the fabric of time and the universe itself to get back to you, that’s what I’m damn well going to do.”

“You would never abandon me,” Domerin murmured and pressed his face against the side of Crescent’s face. “I know that without having to even think about it,” he added with a gentle smile. “You are simply doing what has to be done. As am I. I regret that it means we have to separate-“

“But it will be faster for me than you,” Crescent concluded. Then he kissed Domerin, and it seemed there was nothing left to say.

*   *   *

The night was spent enjoying each other’s company, and Crescent etched every moment of it into his memory so that no force could ever make him forget it. Even if the timeline was rewritten a hundred or a thousand times, he would think of these moments still. He had claimed them for himself and, thus, recorded them on the eternal fabric of the universe.

There was no other way he could do the things he needed to do.

Crescent roused before the sun’s first rays even began to lick at the horizon and spent a moment basking in the presence of Domerin’s strong, supple body curled around him. He measured his lover’s soft, quiet breathing and spent a little while matching it.

He wished he could stay there forever. But if he lingered long enough for Domerin to wake, he would change his mind.

So he extracted himself carefully from their mound of blankets and laid a gentle kiss on the side of Domerin’s head. The warrior’s ears flicked forward and back, perhaps seeking some sign of danger. Then he stilled and settled into the warm spot Crescent left behind him.

It only took a few minutes to shove his belongings back into his pack. Crescent had packed light when they left the future and hadn’t gained much extra to carry since their arrival here.

Last of all he checked that the time remote was tucked securely into its pocket. Then he ducked through the tent flap and re-secured it in his wake.

Even at this hour, with the cool, crisp air of night still hanging thick around the camp, there was activity among the tents. Sentry watch had been set, and the morning shift would soon have to be roused to prepare for the swap. There were always those that couldn’t sleep, that needed the privy or who preferred to complete their tasks during the night hours. But they were few, and none of them questioned Crescent’s presence, well used to seeing him active at this time.

Under the guise of a stealth scouting mission, Crescent slipped through one of the thinner checkpoints along the edge of the camp. Then he galloped into the closest copse of trees and slowed his pace as he searched for the densest, thickest area of undergrowth he could find.

It was imperative that no one see the bright lights of the magic circle when he summoned it. He couldn’t risk someone questioning Domerin or, worse, trying to follow in his wake.

They already had one time stow-away to deal with, after all. They couldn’t afford another.

With each step he took farther from the camp, Crescent reminded himself of the paramount nature of his task. He needed to bring news to Domerin, and the sooner he gathered that news, the sooner he could slide back here and rejoin his beloved.

But even so, when the time finally came to activate the remote, Crescent hesitated. He pulled it free of its pocket and stared at the button that would activate his return.

He contemplated turning back, though he didn’t know how he would explain himself at the guard checkpoint. Forgetting something for a vital mission would hardly go over well.

He wished suddenly that he had waited for Domerin to wake so that he could have said one last farewell. But then he would have balked even harder than he did now.

You will see him again soon, he reminded himself. It will be just a blink of an eye.

But something told him that wasn’t going to be true, and it almost made him give up and run back.

Instead, he prodded the button that activated the time remote and shoved the remote back into the pocket on his pack.

Bright light flared to life as the circle grew and flashed a blurry image of what lay on its other side.

The gentle, warm light of Rose’s workshop came into view quickly, and the tubes and wires and bubbling concoctions that filled it soon became clear as well. Crescent could almost hear the soft click of hooves moving toward the circle’s radius, waiting to greet him.

He cast one last look over his shoulder, almost hoping he would see Domerin standing in the thin stream of light before he rushed forward. And when he didn’t see the warrior, he hoped the portal would once again halt his progress because he didn’t have the other half of his party with him – that would convince Domerin he needed to take the risk of leaving!

But this time, when Crescent slid his hoof across the threshold, he felt the change in air temperature and his foot came down on the hard floor of the workshop. His shoulders shifted through the portal next and, before he knew it, he was standing beneath the bright lights of the princess’s work room with two eager faces and four bright eyes staring in his direction.

“Where is Domerin?” the princess gasped as the portal closed behind Crescent.

The diplomat shook his head. “For reasons I will soon explain, he needed to stay behind.” He braced himself then, drew such a deep breath it filled his lungs and puffed out his chest, and said, “We need to know if the changes we’ve executed have had any effect on this side of the timeline.”

The worry that creased Rose’s face lingered just a moment longer before it gave way to a bright smile that rapidly moved toward a grin.

“Well,” she said breathlessly, “have we got news in that regard!”