I open my eyes, and stare at the distant shimmer. It's tempting, some days. It’s not far. A couple of hours flight at most, perhaps, to the valley’s mouth and the veil within. I could leave before she even wakes up. In my dreams, sometimes, I do, and – “Mmph!” Cirrus wakes up, pushing my wing off her, and I lean down and give her a gentle nuzzle. She darts away, wings flittering, laughing. I shake my head with a wry grin, comb my mane out the best I can, and shoulder our packs as she flies above me. The dazzling light from the maddened sky shines down on her wings, and makes her look like some manic pegasus butterfly. She knows the way; we’ve walked this path many times before. When we reach the village, it isn't there. It's never existed. I do my best not to remember why. [hr] [i]Scritch[/i] It's around midday when I hear footsteps behind Cirrus and I. I turn to see Valencia - that's still her name, as far as I can remember - standing there with a long, puckered scar winding itself from her forehead to her withers. She glares at me, memories flooding my mind unbidden. A knife. An accident. A mistake. Valencia's still staring at me, and Cirrus has gone quiet. By the expression on Valencia's face, her memories are similar to mine. “I’m sorry, “ I say, dumbly. Valencia bows her head. "Forget it." There’s no anger in that voice; just something numb, and cold. We both know there's no point in blaming each other. Both know we've done this many times before. Neither knowing just how many. Living so many lives jumbles your memory, like fifty verses of the same song. Everybody has different memories, here. Every pony. Every day. I hear Cirrus behind me, calling my name, and turn to see her bouncing on a young tree limb, and when I turn back around, Valencia’s gone. I don't wait for her to return. [hr] I spend the rest of the day drawing on the soft earth with sharpened sticks, teaching Cirrus how to write in a script I’ve forgotten learning. Time passes with every written word, and blurs like so many sentences, and when I look up again its dark. Valencia doesn't come back. I curl up to Cirrus, in the center of where the village has never been, and hold her close, and drape a wing over her sleeping form. Against my chest, I feel her breathing slow. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Some days there’s a whole village here, full of other ponies, and we wake up in a warm home with a blazing hearth, and Cirrus runs down the street with the other foals, laughing. Some days, we’re the only ones, with the whole village to ourselves like a ghost town. Some days, like today, we wake up to find that the village has never existed at all. Those aren’t the worst days. Those are the days I wake up alone. We don’t know how long we’ve been here. Valencia. Cirrus and I. The others. We don’t even know where [i]here[/i] is. There is one consensus, however: that the Sisters tried to save us, and that they failed. That's constant. The one thing we all know. That we can all agree on, every day, no matter how much our memories change. They failed us, and they forgot us, and they left us their broken sky to make us remember. Cirrus and I try not to talk about our daily pasts. About the people we’ve forgotten. Tell ourselves it's not important. Some ponies do; they sit, and reminisce, or marvel on the differences, or fight about them. Every now and then, a pony walks to the veil at the end of the valley. The ones who’re too tired to go on. The ones who’ve given up hope. We don’t remember them after that; we’re not even sure how many have left. You could count the number of buildings perhaps, on the days the town’s always been here, but even that seems to change. At least, it does in my dreams. The starless sky grows darker, and as sleep and fresh memories take me, Cirrus warm against me, I dream in hope. Hope that the Princesses will return. Hope that on some distant morning, we’ll awaken to find our consensus broken. Hope that someday, somebody will remember a better life for us all.