They're... ON HOLIDAY?

Day 7 - Drones? What drones?: 3/7

"You never take a break, do you?" asks Gem quietly but still audibly enough so that 387 can hear her over the chatter of other guests of the group walking up a sloping mountain path.

The warrior, walking next to her with a little delay so that he can see the back of her head, doesn't even bother denying that the majority of his attention is occupied by her no matter how much Smiley is running around with the occasional slowdown due to stumbling on three legs and writing or drawing on its tablet.

"You still haven't answered how you've managed to do something changelings thought impossible," he replies, "Silents don't-"

"Are you sure any of you actually tried?" she asks with just the faintest hint of bitterness in her voice.

"What's that supposed to mean?" 387 frowns.

After a long time of walking up the slope of the inactive volcano taking up the eastern third of the island, they reach a short cliff with a staircase carved into its side, accompanied by solid railings. The guide walking first beckons at the guests and leads the way while calling out:

"We're almost there! The terrace is right above us."

With the guests queuing up for the final stretch of the ascent, Gem makes Smiley stop playing with its tablet and has it walk ahead of her, avoiding the need to answer 387's question immediately. She can't tell the warrior anything concrete, but the right mix of truth and lies should be much more useful.

One brief climb later, a vast, flat grassland stretches in front of them while the slope of the volcano continues rising several hundred pony lengths to the right. The terrace is covered with rocks and what on the first glance looks like ruined buildings, with a large, clearly maintained one far in the distance. Gem walks over to the edge of the cliff they've just climbed, and admires the view - the sparkling sea down in the distance, the slope covered by a mix of resort areas and well-maintained vegetation, and finally the short stretch of a much wilder jungle they've just crossed.

"It's not Canterlot, but the sea and the quiet make up for it," she smiles, whispering, "I wish you were her to see it, dad. You deserved- no, I know you're still out there somewhere. You deserve more than dark tunnels."

387 approaches her, but the guide starts talking just as he opens his mouth to press the issue of presumably impossible mental recovery.

"There are several terraces just like this one along the slope of the volcano, but this one is the largest. The rocks you see scattered everywhere around are the remains of a city mixed with pyroclastic debris. Care to guess what species used to live here just from the style of architecture?" the griffon guide walks over to the closest remnants of a wall and taps his talons against it. After several calls of 'pony', 'griffon', and even a 'dragon', the guide continues, "You're all correct to a small degree, actually. This island used to lie on the path of dragon migrations during the time of the settlers, and inside the museum -the large building you can see standing ahead- you'll see paintings of battles as well as scorched remains of armor and weapons. However, as far as we know dragons never settled this island for some weird reason. Both ponies and griffons did, actually, and the fusion of industrial and natural architecture, which will become more apparent as we visit the buildings which survived the passing of time in a better shape, belongs to their hippogriff descendants. In the year 248 of the second Irongrip dynasty-"

Smiley's wings instinctively buzz as it leans over the cliff edge and gets pulled back by Gem's foreleg. In response, it gives her a hug and trots off to keep up with the main group of the guests. Gem deliberately trails a bit behind to allow 387 some time alone with her.

"I had a changeling friend," she says when the warrior approaches as expected, "A mentally impaired drone, albeit far from Smiley's deficiency."

"Had?"